Eastbourne-based miserabilist David Ford would make the perfect addition to the morose talking heads on BBC’s Grumpy Old Men. If he wasn’t the right (or, from the point of view of the Beeb, wrong) side of 30. As it is, this is music you can play to reassure you that somebody is having a shittier time of it than you, although Ford is at pains to point out not every song is autobiographical.

Closer ‘…And So You Fell’ though touches on a real-life experience of the twentysomething troubadour. Offering a response to the suicide of a friend who tumbled to their death, as Ford poetically puts it, “like Ophelia to the deep”. It’s a fitting conclusion to a second album that improves even on the sublime basement tapes of his 2005 debut, I Sincerely Apologise For All The Trouble I’ve Caused.

Much of the material on the follow-up was written whilst touring his first album, which Ford being Ford wasn’t always much fun. So we have our (anti-) hero picking a lyrical fight with a Deep South extremist on ‘St Peter’. Praise be to whoever, however, that Ford refuses to suffer in silence.

(4/5)