Fuse the most fragile and graceful end of the folk music spectrum to the most luminous properties of cinemascope rock, and you have the stunning debut album from Newcastle-based sextet Lanterns On The Lake. 'Gracious Tide, Take Me Home' warrants the use of often over-played adjectives such as “celestial”, “swooning” and “absolutely bloody gorgeous.” For an album debut, that’s something special, because most bands don’t reach such an exalted plateau until they’ve matured.

On that exalted plateau, 'Gracious Tide…' uses a smorgasbord of instruments (guitars, violin, mandolin, piano, synths, glockenspiels) to paint a variety of beautiful vistas, from the ambient ‘Ships In The Rain’ to the galloping ‘A Kingdom’, from the six-minute layers of ‘The Places We Call Home’ to the skeletal 73-second finale ‘Not Going Back To The Harbour’, which singer and elected spokesperson Hazel Wilde sees as, “a dark twist,” to the record. There’s a compelling drama to Lanterns On The Lake; the way the opening track ‘Lungs Quicken’ shifts from dreamy restraint and slinky beats to a full-blown crescendo indicates the true power at their fingertips.