It starts, predictably, very quietly. It gets, predictably, very loud. It ends slightly less predictably, with a lachrymose violin solo. That’s ‘Xmas Steps’, lead track here, and a trifling 11 minutes long. For sure, few bands save Mogwai have the ambition and intuitive grasp of dynamics to combine the mathematical, belligerent and romantic – or, more prosaically to combine Slint, Black Sabbath and The Dirty Three – as effectively as this. But you can’t help thinking, Luke Sutherland’s lovely fiddle coda apart, that the prodigiously gifted ‘Gwai have been in this neighbourhood a good few times already. Driving hard rather than re-inventing the wheel, for now.