There’s a hint of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra on Aleks And The Ramps’ second LP 'Midnight Believer', writes ANDREW RAMADGE.

On stage between their first album, Pisces Vs Aquarius, and this, their second, Aleks And The Ramps would often play a cover of Lee Hazlewood's 'My Autumn's Done Come'. It's a slow, sad song about entering the twilight years and preparing for the end. "Kiss all the pretty ones goodbye/Give everyone a penny that cries," sings Hazlewood – best known for his collaborations with Nancy Sinatra and "cowboy psychedelia" style – in his enormous baritone, over a gentle acoustic guitar and string section. This fact is more than just trivia. It goes some way to explaining Midnight Believer.

Aleks Bryant channels Hazlewood, and his counterpart Janita Foley evokes Nancy Sinatra, at more than one point on this album. "All I really want to do/Is come clean to someone like you," Bryant sings in one early moment, slow and deep and hopelessly, like a man trying to tread water in concrete boots. It's part of a suite of songs that deal with regret, guilt, loss and anxiety – those eternal "big" themes – as if the music wasn't the work of a young experimental pop band at all, but a last, longing glance back at what went wrong.

Midnight Believer is a work that threatened never to be finished. After their first album, the members of Aleks And The Ramps found themselves balancing countless side projects. Joe Foley plays as Extreme Wheeze, Janita as Denim Owl, Simon Connolly has his own band Potential Falcon, while new drummer Jon Tjhia is in ii and Scissors for Sparrow. It may be because of this that the album sounds divided in two. On the first half, Bryant explores his own influences in a series of songs inspired by remorseful country ballads. On the second, the band return to the schizophrenic pop they're known for.

"'All I really want to do/Is come clean to someone like you,' Bryant sings in one early moment, slow and deep and hopelessly, like a man trying to tread water in concrete boots."

If the early tracks are inspired by a country tradition, it's in theme more than style. On 'Walking In The Garden', a man struggles to hide murderous impulses from his lover ("I wish that I could let you know what goes on in this head/But there's some things that might make you uneasy about sharing a bed"). And on 'Hey Owl', a character tries to cope with the death of his wife ("I just can't deal with this amount of change/So I pretend your phone's still out of range"). The music, however, is like something from outer space – dreamy and spacious, unfamiliar and exciting.

While these tracks are beautiful, it’s the album's second half that will thrill on first listen. It begins with 'Boy Meets Ghost', one of Midnight Believer's best songs, that heralds the return of the band's trademark obsessions. Random yelps and screams, breakneck changes of style, bitter fights between lovers and brutal vocal sparring between Bryant and Janita – all of the things that were the heartbeat of Pisces Vs Aquarius – come back bigger and better. The lyrics become absurd and black-humoured and Bryant's characters go back to trying to kill each other.

The back-and-forth between Bryant and Janita reaches its peak on 'Whiplash', where each vocal punchline is backed-up by a laugh track and applause. As always, the interchange is vicious. And as always, Janita ends up with the best lines. A few seconds before delivering the killer blow, she speculates on her rival's sexual fantasies: "And I can only guess what it would be/You and me, and the me in your head/In a ménage à trois in your parents' bed?/I'll never touch you again, so I suggest/You get a tattoo of that lipstick stain on your chest."

With every song, the album picks up momentum – it seems designed to hurtle toward the final track and first single, 'Antique Limb'. There is a brief interlude before it gets there – a quirky spoken-word piece via computer vocals, ala OK Computer, that will no doubt irritate some listeners – but when it arrives, oh boy. The song is the culmination of everything on the record up to that point: four minutes of strange and pure pop, part intergalactic broadcast, part calypso jam, recalling the very best moments of that other experimental pop collective Architecture in Helsinki. It's an exhilarating climax to one of the albums of the year.

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Midnight Believer is out now through Stomp.