The Wheel, Daniel Fitzpatrick’s third record, is anchored by a loose approach. The band, partly inspired by Peter Jackson’s 2022 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, rehearsed and shaped this Badhands record over the course of two weeks, then recorded it in three days. Fitzpatrick called it “more of a band effort, with an emphasis on recording live where possible”.

There is the ghostly hand of the longer-term effects of the pandemic, mainly in the record’s exploration of time: how we use it, how we waste it and how we want more of it.

For a Little While sounds like Nick Cave and Tom Waits conversing in a piano bar, understated yet warm. I Don’t Mind, with its lovely electric guitar, puts Fitzpatrick’s rich-yet-world-weary voice in focus; Bad Dreams brings to mind Harry Nilsson; and Something to Sell weaves a compelling story, with gorgeous flourishes – a cascading piano here, a lilting guitar there.

Movie Nights surprises, setting a Chromatics-like atmosphere. “Hollywood is killing me,” sings Fitzpatrick, making it sound like a blast. Good Things Never Last and its imperious piano mirrors the deft, sombre No Way to Live. Head in the Clouds sees our protagonist float around in denial; tense but romantically nostalgic, it adroitly frames the album’s closer, Head in the Clouds Revisited, which is all crumpled, faded beauty.