Thrashing Marlin: Wildlife (Braille/bandcamp)

An offshoot of the award-winning soundtrack collective Plan 9, Thrashing Marlin are probably too busy with other work to keep this alt.pop outlet going.

It's been over a decade since their previous album, Donkey Deep about which we said, “dark songs of crime, punishment, evil-doers and alcohol . . . are rendered as disarming musical spin-offs from country, cabaret, moody folk-rock and sea shanty-like melodies with eerily evocative instrumental passages between.”

Plan 9 are Janet Roddick, David Donaldson and Stephen Roche, all present and correct here (Roddick a guest in Donaldson-Roche's Marlin project) along with fellow travelers Riki Gooch, David Long, family members and others.

But Thrashing Marlin allows them to deliver slightly off-kilter pop, alt.country and – on the idiosyncratic Out of Sight – link back to the Four Volts, Six Volts and other albums on their Braille label in the Eighties on which many of them appeared.

Although not as dark as Donkey Deep was in places, here is the bluesy pop-noir Blood of the Lamb and the approachable guitar-driven pop-rock Same Boat: “Everybody’s aiming for a destination but nobody’s watching where they go. You might be standing on a blue horizon or you might be stepping on somebody’s toes”.

Guitarists Moris Tepper and David Long add some terrific emotional colour and melodic elements across this album which in many places sounds driven by serious personal matters, as on the beautifully thoughtful Sorrow: “When sorrow came as if invited, sat right down down beside us . . . and then it took it's toll again . . . when sorrow left we hardly noticed . . .”.

There are equally fine lighter songs here too (the loving and slightly post-coital mood of Sunday Best, Wonder Why) and by the end of the 12 songs -- the final being the delightfully celestial ballad Worlds Collide -- you'll be wishing these people took more time away from the soundtracks for more like this deliberately modest but rather beguiling collection.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here