Alt-J's debut arrives like a cryptic crossword set to anxious percussion, all trembling falsetto and origami-folded arrangements that reference Maurice Sendak and wartime photographers with equal peculiarity. The Leeds graduates treat indie rock as mathematical proof, their triangle symbol apt for music built on acute angles rather than verse-chorus comfort.

Charlie Andrew's production captures their deliberate strangeness, where "Breezeblocks" stalks through domestic menace and "Tessellate" shivers with choral geometry. The Mercury Prize validated what student unions already knew: awkwardness, weaponised correctly, becomes magnetism.