Album: Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Crown and Treaty (EMI)

Last seen picking up a Mercury nom with the folk-rock-styled Twice Born Men, Buckinghamshire band SBP return for their third album with a far more complex musical palette.

Crown and Treaty draws upon the layered sophistication of 1970s AOR acts such as Steely Dan and 10cc, with Tim Elsenburg's falsetto navigating its way through nine songs which, like PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, are overtly haunted by the ghosts of British history.