The first two His Name Is Alive albums, Livonia and Home Is In Your Head, were deeply hermetic things; isolated from the world, listening to them sounded like eavesdropping. Mouth By Mouth is just as intimate, but now HNIA’s Warren Defever has opened his music up – more vocalists, more instruments, more rhythm, more colour. Compared to what came before, it’s kaleidoscopic. The songs still hint at folk song and church music, in their reduced, repetitive structures, but now they’re vibrant with detail: “Lord, Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace” is cleaved in two by a sample of spiralling winds; the following “Drink, Dress & Ink” is song that’s fighting against its own boundaries, a tremolo’d rush of noise. The cover of Big Star’s “Blue Moon” stands out as Alex Chilton’s song is more traditionally formal, but HNIA fold even this into their imagined community of sound.

– Jon Dale