The last time we heard from Trash Kit in 2010 on their self-titled debut, the all-female London trio sounded like an exuberant amalgamation of X-Ray Spex and Delta 5 across 17 snippets of scratchy, fidgety post-punk. Much remains the same, with spindly staccato guitar lines and jittery stop-start rhythms still very much the order of the day on this second LP from Rachels Aggs and Horwood and former Electrelane bassist Ros Murray. Aggs still speak-yelps her way through songs that alternate between the archly political and the plainly outlandish (“I had a dream, I lost my teeth,” she recounts on the nightmarish Teeth). The songs are longer this time around, and Murray’s old bandmate Verity Susman lends some heft to lead single Medicine and album closer Shyness with some low-end sax squawking.

The most obvious progression over the past four years though – and perhaps simultaneously the album’s greatest strength and weakness – is Horwood’s drumming. Whereas previously her syncopated beats at least occasionally gave way to straight-ahead grooves, now they’re relentlessly frenetic; a disorientating cavalcade of rolls and fills in lockstep with Murray’s bass.

The result is that it’s impossible to get a firm handle on a track like Skin because it’s constantly trying to wriggle out of your hands, determined not to stay in one place for any length of time. Depending on your perspective, this makes for either an endlessly exciting and rewarding listening experience, or a maddeningly frustrating one.

James F. Thompson