It seems I always start Tartaruga reviews with a reference to the lovely package. Well, I’d hate to disappoint. I can only assume that said heavy duty cladding and thick thread used to house Tartaruga records is needed in order to help constrain the epic, bulging contents within. This latest one from Bleeding Heart Narrative strains the seams of decency with its yards of swelling symphonic and electronic post-rock pop.

With his second release for the label, Bleeding Heart Narrative’s Oliver Barrett has gone to great lengths to deliver a more song-based album than his debut, but without sacrificing the ambition that categorised his debut. So on the one hand we get the swirling orchestrated crescendos of “The Cartographer”. On the other hand we get the abstract electronic drones of “Earthing” and the clumps of free noise that bookend “A Dialogue”. On the other hand (oh, stop counting hands, have you nothing better to do you?) we get the Animal Collective dream-pop of “Henry Box Brown” and “Colours Turn Colours“, full of layered vocals and rollicking rhythms. That isn’t a comparison I expected to be making when I unsheathed this record, but that band’s enthusiastic genre-hopping sonic experimentalism, married to their blue-eyed pop savvy, is the best reference point I can muster. Now just imagine them with cellos. And try not to get too excited.

Tongue Tangled Hair is out now on Tartaruga. On 15 November Bleeding Heart Narrative perform a live soundtrack to Chris Marker’s La Jetee and more at the Duke of Wellington on London’s Balls Pond Road.