Lissom, lambent and elegiac: their name might be a mouthful but the proficient self-produced debut album from Something Beginning with L (SBL for short) is a stellar and ethereal earful.

Beautiful Ground is an album powered in part by the contradiction between prosaically intimate imagery and otherworldly surging crescendos. It makes for a record that is mesmeric and climactic, yet retains elements of introversion. Lyrical flights of fantasy are restricted to childish invention on ‘Elephant pt. ii’ (“Once we believed / An elephant lived at the bottom of the garden”) and a firearm trope on the atypically opaque ‘One Knee Two Knee’.

Although hardly a new ruse, it has become quite the de rigueur indie thing these days to begin an LP with something stewing and stirring as a prelude to the album proper. Like a smokescreen through which mere flickers and flashes of coming blaze tantalise the listener, as an abstract device this sort of sub-song posturing is, it would be fair to suggest, pretty tricky to muck up. It’s the audio equivalent of taking a run-up and SBL employ the ploy to rather fine effect (whether or not their original intention) on the otherwise cryptic opener ‘Poster Croc’.

As the first bars start up, you could be excused for diagnosing the trio as souped-up-synth and reverb merchants. That is until it unfolds, revealing the SBL spectrum of muted close harmonies, distinctive drumming and electric guitar break-out, building through a rousing climax to a solitary, suspended note that bridges to the drop of ‘Last Night’s Party’. With or without its stormy forerunner, this is the stand-out track – a translucently rueful morning-after song, unfussy and beautifully sung, mingling lines like “This person is not the person I wanted you to leave with” with rhymes like “taxi” and “attracts me”. Yes please.

It is followed by the classy ‘Hobby’ and sassy ‘Sound’, in which the ambient rock aesthetic comes to the fore and never really takes leave. Something deftly retro also emanates – and not just on the songs that catalogue childhood moments – from the superb close harmonies conjured by singers Lucy Parnell and Jen Macro, which also serve to balance out the surrounding clamour. The frontwomen, who add guitar as well, are joined by Jon Clayton on bass and keys and more guest drummers than you could shake their collective sticks at, should you wish to attempt such a thing. Although the overall effect is often one of dauntless understatement, it is certainly never sparse. Crunchy synth, tantrum drums, fuzzes and buzzes all grace proceedings, adding to the tumult elsewhere. The similarly taciturnly-titled ‘Say’ and ‘Mean’, for example, end as proper rock-outs, both in sentiment and trenchant sound. Impressively, these tonal shifts are reviving and gladdening, don’t expend the lustre and never feel laborious or wanton.

The closing two tracks are particularly noteworthy. First comes ‘Unwittingly Beautiful’, a languorous, slightly sickly exaltation for a lover, wrenching emotion from the tones and drones in maudlin overdrive. It’s a bit of an epic but I prefer ‘73’, the mellowest and most interesting sonic concoction on the album. Maybe it’s just the track position, but the song is also unnervingly like a reprise, the hint of an echo of something gone before.

Something Beginning with L are on to a winner with Beautiful Ground, as long as the band can overcome two minor enough obstacles. The first, tongue-in-cheek, is their name and the inevitable alliteration games (guilty, m’lord) and I Spy references (not guilty, though I don’t recognise your jurisdiction anyway, so nerr) it will inspire. The second: don’t mention (the) Warpaint, who use very similar ingredients to make a bigger impact, although admittedly with fewer pop moments. Still, it’s a fine first effort well worthy of your ears – and if the dream pop resurgence of recent years has helped to show the way for latent talent of this calibre, then let’s hope SBL ride the wave.