Let’s Gdansk: splendid fifth offering from the Polish art-rock quartet. Super Trupa Trupa: swimming against the tides. Straight out of a Baltic port, this gripping and energetic record packs a serious punch while doing some of its best work very quietly.

On first listen it’s Trupa Trupa’s relent-less pulsing energy that washes through you – their taut and well-integrated music inter-mittently recalls the thrilling discipline of Fugazi, the urgent martial interpolations of The Ex and the woozy wide-open spaces of Acetone, without ever doing so for long enough to compromise the band’s distinctive identity. Their signature move is frequent and effective recourse to moments of sombre reflec-tion, like the church organ in Mangle or the way Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s perfectly modulated vocal hangs serenely over the churning bass riff at the start of Another Day. And Remainder’s insistent refrain of, „Well it did not take place”, is a haunting reminder of the cold tidal currents of history against which Trupa Trupa swim with such heartening vigour.

Ben Thompson, Mojo