In the late 1980s, British record companies signed lots of bands making "big music" – swathes of reverb, stadium-rock drums and dollops of furrowed-browed "passion" – who were invariably photographed staring over windswept landscapes. Although he wasn't even born back then, 24-year-old Saunders recalls this tradition with his huge noise, ethereal guitars and even a sleeve depicting a barren desert – but there's more beauty than bombast here. There's a yearning, poetic quality to titles such as Starless State of the Moonless Barrow. Like his predecessors (specifically forgotten Scottish band the Silencers), he often sings about the elements – especially rain and oceans – but there's an affecting darkness to lyrics such as Appointment in Sahara's lines about "bodies in the ground". Good Women – which is actually about bad men – is a fairly standard Coldplay-type ballad, but his aching falsetto is lovely, as is the skyscraping In High Heels Burn It Down. Throughout, Saunders sounds like a young artist striving to produce something extraordinary.