Some bands are destined to make their masterpiece at some point. They can record with ease, within an Elbow-like status of being respected but not being demanded of before bam!… out comes the chef d’oeuvre. You get the sense that The Phantom Band are in that care-free world of writing songs with no limits, without anyone looking over their shoulder. Those conditions, combined with the fairly-important factor that they’re accomplished musicians means the Scottish sextet are surely bound at some point to make an album of real significance. Many declared their debut Checkmate Savage to be just that. But it’s not. Neither is the follow-up, The Wants. But both records establish an uncontrollable ambition to make music that feel both complete and deserving of all the listener’s attention.

In many ways The Wants is reminiscent of Wild Beasts’ second album, Two Dancers. In fact this album feels very much like 2010’s answer to the Kendal-group’s breakthrough, in that both show off a band going places, totally aware of their own potential. Some elements of The Wants even, could have been copied and pasted fromTwo Dancers; the reverberated guitars; the light, bongo-driven percussion; Rick Anthony’s flamboyant, swaggering vocal performance and the sexual yet sinister charge of songs like ‘O’. And again, you can draw parallels between the two bands through the fact that both are expected of bigger and better things, despite current achievements.

But even as the stark naked knowledge of this being an accomplished work stares you in the face, The Wants is a thick and foggy album to get into. Its songs are made up from dozens of fragmented ideas, densely-pieced together. Anthony’s voice can at times stay within a certain vocal radius; deep and unfaltering. Groggy, tense and tight – it’s a record that’s fine to admire from a distance, but prepare yourself for a beastly, fierce experience if you’re intending to get any closer. Even with the melodies embedded deep into my head, every time I attempted to put two thoughts together on the album, my mind ended up shutting like a clam. It’s difficult to explain why: Each song is magnificently detailed and totally unafraid of expanding its own boundaries – ‘The None Of One’, as an example, builds its foundations upon light, gasping acoustic guitars before undergoing some nifty surgery and evolving into a tough, sprawling electronic opus.

The only number barren of overdubs and the minor details is ‘Come Away In The Dark’, a mid-album acoustic number recorded in one take. In many ways it works better than the rest of the record. There’s a greater sense of harmony and altogether-ness in hearing vocals sung as if surrounding a campfire. But then there’s the flip-side in album closer ‘Goodnight Arrow’; a full-blown, thriving swansong, half pure melancholy, half the sound of a grand battle – so majestic, so ambitious that it blows its competitors out of the water. Within its five-and-a-half minutes is layer upon layer of guitar, synth and spooky harmonic vocal and it defines the very appeal of The Phantom Band: their unrivalled ambition to create something original and of worth.

And so The Wants is a huge accomplishment. Of course it is. It’s a confident, charming building on the groundwork – one solid, difficult to pin down building, for the record. It’s not their masterpiece, but it’s another nagging alarm bell to say that said standard is fast approaching.