- From Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks to Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak the break up album has a significant presence in the backstory of pop music. We’re suckers for ‘em. ALL of us, we need to make them, we need to have them - how else do you justify Taylor Swift? But for real, loss is confusing and making sense of things and sharing it is what humans do.

One of pop’s outliers, David Longstreth, the core of Dirty Projectors, has gifted us with his workings and his discoveries that are born out of the split with former band member and lover Amber Coffman. A return to the beginning of this creative project, it’s simply and appropriately a self-titled release.

Longstreth and co. have always been weird. For all of their relegation to indie or experimental rock, we’ve all got to get it together and accept that this is R’n’B. Really weird R’n’B, making Frank Ocean’s latest work seem so much less so. It does sound incredible, though. With far less guitar and the studio as primary instrument, it’s full of exotic rhythms and solid grooves, blended with supreme electronics often jammed together with abrupt structural turns. And, where Work Together is a demanding listen, there are reprieves where you can settle into to sweeping melodic releases, like Up In Hudson’s horn arrangement and the gentle reverie of Little Bubble.

What’s really beautiful about this album is the emotional maturity with which it presents the process of moving on. It’s at once wistful and compassionate without overblown sentiment: no gross sense of the sappy or pitiful. It isn’t bitter and resentful either, for that matter. The way in which Longstreth looks back with respect and clarity is refreshing. Hell, I’d date Longstreth just to go through a breakup and experience him be entirely cool about it.

This record is his strongest yet. Vivid and varied, hypnotic grooves and melodies rich with feel. There are moments for you to pause in the sombre light of hindsight and moments that will bolster your resolve. This return as the individual and his elaborate pursuit of progressive pop catharsis should be recognised as a modern classic.

- NJR.