The Floral Clocks (musician Gabriel White, and lyricist Richard Von Sturmer) have released some thought-provoking and beautiful songs since their first album, 2014’s ‘Desert Fire’.

While that album, and the 2017 follow-up, ‘A Beautiful Shade Of Blue’ were based around acoustic guitars and sounds, their new long-player is more expansive, playing with electronic sounds, and fuller instrumentation – something immediately apparent on the album’s opening track Venus.

Planets and stars feature a lot in ‘Gas Giant’, with lyrics using these celestial bodies as metaphors for people. The lyrics also delve into the elemental nature of the planets and stars, and words are frequently married to music that reflects them. Take for example the insistent rhythms on Rilke at Warpspeed, or the carnival waltz of Canis Canicular.

Because of the broader use of instruments and the beating rhythms, ‘Gas Giant’ is more freewheeling, and looser in structure, and has little touches of the unexpected like the rockabilly-influenced Down Among The Dots. The mix of sci-fi themes and art-rock sounds takes the album into a different space, one that is reminiscent in Little Armadillo, to Dimmer’s 2001 ‘I Believe You are a Star’ album.

With ‘Gas Giant’, Floral Clocks have delivered a challenging, often unsettling album, with textural depth and expansive themes. Badged as alternative, underground, or garage pop, ‘Gas Giant’ rewards with repeated listening.