The Spinning Top is a 70-minute folk concept album. Unless you’re a raging fucknut, the phrase ‘70-minute folk concept album’ should rank somewhere between ‘Nazi themed gang-rape’ and ‘Jo Wiley’ on the scale of vomit-inducing horror. This is especially the case given Coxon’s history of self-indulgent lo fi prior to the fizzing pop-punk cluster-bomb that was Happiness in Magazines.

So when the fiddly finger-picked guitars of opener Look Into The Light flitter in and utterly fail to be Spectacular, you could be forgiven for expecting the worst. Then something kind of weird happens, because, far from being the beard-scratching scrotum-ache you’d imagine, Look Into The Light is actually overwhelmingly lovely. It clearly doesn’t explode in your face like the aforementioned track, instead it gently nuzzles its way into your brain and sits there emitting warming rays of melodic charm until you fall in love with it.

It sets a pattern for the rest of the album; pretty tune after pretty tune stumbles from the speakers and quietly but persistently tugs away at you until it has your full and undivided attention. Admittedly there’s also a fair bit of proggy flap-doodle on there, but it is a Graham Coxon concept album, after all.

The ‘concept’ is apparently the story of a man’s life from birth to death, but, seriously, if you care about that sort of thing you’re an idiot and I don’t want you anywhere near me. However, although there are moments of drag – the gloopy repetition of Caspian Sea being a case in point – as a whole The Spinning Top holds together surprisingly well albeit despite, rather than because of, Coxon’s ‘experimentation’.

Given the choice, you’d have much rather Coxon had made another Happiness in Magazines but – hey – it’s an imperfect world we live in, and The Spinning Top  is a pretty decent alternative.