The other night I went to a truly delightful ‘Enchanting/Medieval’ party that one of my friends threw. It was a sensational party, full of people dressed as fairies, elves, jesters and slackers that couldn’t be bothered dressing up. While I was standing in the corner of the room, talking about how I thought Franz Ferdinand’s debut album could have indeed been so much better, I heard someone stick on a You Am I CD or something. At that point, I stopped this meaningless debate and said to the chap ‘This party needs some Espers’. At which he said ‘Who the hell are they?”.

Espers you wouldn’t normally chuck on at a party, but at this medieval shindig it seemed more than fitting. Espers are a truly talented sextet that formed in the streets of Philadelphia in 2002 – and seriously one of the best things I’ve seen come out of Philly since cream cheese. The music is dark, moody, enchanting and Elizabethan.

The album opens with Dead Queen, which slowly builds to an epic climax and sounds like a film score to an old Ancient English movie. The vocals of Meg Baird float on top of a captivating blend of guitars, woodwind and the gentle clashes of cymbals. The second track Widows Weed continues where Dead Queen left off, this time with a heavy snare drum pounding over the top of a much heavier, moody sound then the previous track.

Cruel Storm is a very pleasant song that sounds slightly more modern then Dead Queen and Widows Weed but would probably still be before electricity or that cream cheese was invented. The vocals from Baird remind me strangely of Dolores O’Riordan from The Cranberries. Cruel Storm is a welcome change from the two quite drawn out songs that come before it – but still stays within the psych-folk boundaries of the album.

That is indeed one problem I had with this second offering from Espers – the songs were a bit too drawn out and overstayed their length a bit too much. I almost thought this was a metal band when I first received the disc, not only due to the titles (Children Of The Stone and Moon Occults The Sun) but due to the fact that every song on the album is longer than 5 minutes and two songs are in the 8 minute mark. For a brooding album like this, it is a bit too much to take.

They are an amazingly talented band, with extremely complex structures and nice little surprises chucked into the mix. It’s a real delight for your ears. But, if they could have made some of the songs a little bit up-beat, it would have been even greater. I’m sure that even in the 15th century, not everyone was this depressed.

Regardless, it has some X-Factor about it that makes me coming back for more. If you love something to chill out too at the end of a hard stressful day of jousting, or just want to hear something a bit different, give Espers II a go. Trust me; there are no Court Jesters within a square kilometer of this thing!