The Bookhouse Boys are a joy.

Nine-strong and raring to go, they take many things that, although hardly new, are well loved and bind them into a fine package. Taking note of Richard Hawley’s Orbison fetish, they’re clearly deciding that although he’s onto a good thing, why stop there? The past has a lot more to mine than crooning, and so they set about reigniting the evil in surf guitar, borrowed liberally from Ennio Morricone, installed some Mariachi brass touches, and generally act as a reminder to Nick Cave that he’s not the only sharp-suited howler with death on his mind.

Although the terms ‘filmic’ or ‘cinematic’ are grossly vague and overused, you’d be hard-put to deny this was an album thought out for widescreen. It may not wear Fairtrade stickers on the back of its hand, and is unlikely to need much scholarly analysis, but it is enormous fun, and the quality levels barely dip across the entire record. Black-wearing, doomed-romance fun maybe, but why not?