Pitchfork Libra is everything you could hope for from Erotic Secrets of Pompeii, a delirious, theatrical, gloriously over-the-top return from Britain’s most unhinged art-rock collective. The opener Ten Ton Delirium lives up to its title immediately with Thomas Hawtin’s lyrical flair running at breakneck speed in a tumble of obscure imagery and strange tales.

For all their absurdity, these songs are tight, punchy, and deeply groovy, mostly living in a straight 4/4 with riffs that stomp. Each track is crammed with little surprises whilst the rhythm section keeps the engine running for Hawtin’s eccentric sermonising. Thematically, he seems obsessed with death and resurrection, with Bring Me Back from the Black Beyond pleading for contact through a séance from the afterlife. Tracks like Moving Sideways into Lightning prove the band can be eerie and restrained, with subtle string embellishments creeping through the mix and making the whole thing even stranger. Where the rest of the album laughs in the face of death We’ve All Been Cruel pauses, sadder and more sincere than anything around it. A song about forgiving ourselves for the uglier parts of being human, it’s a moment of vulnerability that lands hard because of the circus it sits within, but naturally they end by blowing the tent down. Closer Count to Ten With Nobody is a 5/4 banger about the Whitechapel fatberg developing a heartbeat that grooves really hard despite its odd time signature. Amid all the lunacy, ESOP’s songs are built to dance to, managing to feel both huge and homemade, swirling around you in chaos like a technicolour storm, but always feeling rooted in something delightfully DIY, with glue and glitter on their costumes and a pub-basement heart. Erotic Secrets of Pompeii are both ridiculous and sincere, making art-rock that may be too strange for the mainstream, but that’s far too good to stay hidden, and Pitchfork Libra is a groovy blast of theatrical mischief, both high-concept and silly in equal measure that will make you laugh, dance and question your own mortality all at once.