Brighton four-piece Brakes aren’t a band known for messing around when it comes to the delivery of their albums. Their previous album, 2006′s The Beatific Visions on former label Rough Trade, contained 11 songs and lasted less than half an hour. This time round, with their Fat Cat debut Touchdown, they’ve managed to break the 30 minute barrier by an impressive six minutes and added an extra song.

Whatever the reason for this, it gives Brakes’ albums a strange urgency that seems slightly misplaced. At first look – a traditional group of four playing a mix of indie and the curiously-monikered folk-punk (Wikipedia’s words) – you’d expect slower, acoustic-led songs. Whilst this is true, their songs don’t tend to stick around any longer than is comfortable, and there are no periods when it feels as if they’ve run out of ideas.

Opener Two Shocks is a very early highlight, and gives a glimpse into the lyrical craft and humour of Brakes. Lead singer Eamon Hamilton blends his voice in with the background for most of the verse, until launching into a refrain of “I covered my body in Vasoline / and learned how to slip through the gaps” for the chorus – breaking free from the shackles of the music to deliver one of the album’s most curious lyrics. It’s a song packed full of ideas; twisting, turning, and constantly evolving until it flowers into a semi-punk breakdown for the conclusion.

Just like their previous effort, Touchdown also feature a sub-two-minute track for the band to let loose; presumably to fulfil that “folk-punk” mantra they’ve been landed with. Whereas The Beatific Visions saw the slightly bizarre Porcupine Or Pineapple? Touchdown has them basking in instrumental glory throughout Red Rag – suitably angry enough to warrant the title.

They continue their mish-mash of style by sticking the album’s most melodic and rhythmic track, Worry About It Later, immediately after. Once the fuzz dies down we’re greeted by Hamilton’s British-Canadian vocal blending couplets into each other as if they were made of Lego. Like the aforementioned toy, the words seem destined to be slotted together – even lyrics which, on paper, should be dismissed quicker than an English Eurovision entry. Gems such as “the band’s been kicking in the old kick drum / world spins quicker when you start to run” probably shouldn’t work on paper, but they’re lost amidst the jaunty, faux-country delivery which Hamilton appears to specialise in.

More juxtaposition follows – Crush On You isn’t as breathlessly delivered as the previous track, and it’s a complete contrast to what came before. It does chug along though, and even more lyrical confusion – “vampire / snake eyes / snake face / oo I’ve got a crush on you” – can’t subtract from what is a very powerful song indeed.

To compensate for the fact that there are two out of the first five songs coming in at over three minutes, we’re then treated to two of the band’s shorter efforts in quick succession. Do You Feel The Same? crams more sentiment into a minute-and-a-half than most pop songs can manage in three times that length, even managing a cheeky guitar solo, and more than twice the words. Ancient Mysteries follows on from Worry About It Later, but with a clearer subject matter: “little Julia is still in the womb / she doesn’t even know that she’ll be born quite soon / her future husband Michael is already 17 / he drives around town and robs the cash machines / later when she marries him her parents will scream ‘he’s stealing our baby, she’s only 13′”. ‘Nuff said.

Oh! Forever allows us time to recover from the breathless exploits of the previous track by starting in a suitably lazy Silversun Pickups-feedback-esque manner before Hamilton croons over the top of a bass/tambourine double-team. It builds and builds, but the result isn’t their strongest effort by any means. Oh! Forever is probably the one time on Touchdown that the pace relents, however considering that only 20 minutes have elapsed so far a breather isn’t exactly needed. TMM is nothing but honest, so it may as well be said: it’s the one song that stops this album from achieving a perfect score. It’s a minor blemish on what is otherwise as perfect an album as you’re likely to hear all year. It’s been kicking around in and out of various stereos since the Gods at the record label dispatched it our way in late January, and hasn’t once grated or overstayed its welcome.

It’s even more of a shame because the remaining three tracks (four, if you count the bonus – and there’s definitely a bonus song because Brakes don’t deal in six-and-a-half minute finales) continue the high standards set by the album’s beginnings. This is an album which can’t be praised enough, and deserves to be heard at least once. Bands such as Brakes are keeping music fresh, interesting, and alive.