It’s been a while since the last Tiny Ruins album, 2014’s ‘Brightly Painted One’, an album where its creator, Hollie Fullbrook was exhausted and drained after the accompanying tour.

Apart from an EP with Hamish Kilgour in 2015, and a stand-alone single in 2016, Tiny Ruins (now Fullbrook, Cass Mitchell, Alex Freer, Tom Healy, and Finn Scholes) have been quiet.

However, their new (third) album, ‘Olympic Girls’ breaks the silence, and is both a continuation and a new direction, a folk-pop album of vision, and emotive storytelling, with Fullbrook expanding both her sound and her songwriting. ‘Olympic Girls’ shines from start to finish – the expansive production, and fuller sound of her band (synthesizers, mellotron, organ, vibraphone are used widely) colour Fullbrooks lilting melodies and mellifluous voice, giving vibrant imagery to Sparklers, and sonic lustre to Holograms.

There is a folk lineage scattered through the veins of ‘Olympic Girls’ – through the guitar and vocal combinations, through the delivery of the abstract, but highly intimate lyrics, and through the finger-picked acoustic guitar of songs like the descriptive, lovely, and slightly detached School of Design, but it doesn’t overwhelm, more recall where the genre has been, and point to how it could develop in the hands of Fullbrook and Co.

Dazzling from start to finish, ‘Olympic Girls’ is an early contender for one of the best albums of the year.