Assuming you can get it off your stereo.

The sort of blended fare here – it’s sometimes hard to tell if sweet, sweet lovin’ or a smack to the head’s in store – draws broad comparisons with Vegas-era Elvis (if he were prettier), Kim Salmon’s cabaret stylings (if he were less cynical), the windblown power of Calexico (without some of the wank they’ve accumulated) and the death’s head iconography of Nick Cave (with slightly less preachifyin’). What Gentle Ben And His Sensitive Side have pulled off – straight out of the box – is what Dave Graney seems to be reaching for but is never quite able to grasp. What’s more, the ironic shield of the joke isn’t in use. This album’s a rarity: an exploration of lonesome, almost-too-seedy cabaret that doesn’t seem to have its roots in pisstaking. It’s indulgent, sleazy, hilarious and tear-in-beer moving by turns – and it’s far tighter and more accomplished than any debut should be, by rights. There’s rarely been something produced that’s so fully-formed from the get-go.

And that’s not idle; the lyricism at work here is fabulous. A sort of emotional fatalism, a distanced dissection of the acts of a bastard… it’s all a bit noir, with hints of barely-contained anger, mysterious burial and unexplained passions. Take some choice lines from Lo Siento, for example:

I screamed and I spat in the eye of the storm
Oh, struggling and squirming, impaled on the horns
Of the creature that’s taken up residency
In the boarding house room at the centre of me…
Lo siento!

Of course, the vocal work, fine as it is, would be nothing without the band behind it. And the musicians assembled here – Dylan McCormack, Nick Naughton and Trevor Ludlow being the band’s core, with additional help from David McCormack, Shane Melder and Lauren Brown – are the perfect foils for Corbett’s perversely cinematic vocals. The tunes borrow from many musical styles – there’s keyboard-driven pop sounds that’d be welcome on Gidget’s beach blanket parked next to martial drumming and a low-down western guitar. Falling features a powerful, emotive wailed chorus that sounds like it’s been lifted from a Roy Orbison track. Don’t Wait uses the same sense of crescendo – but with a more soulful effect. There’s a mish-mash happening here, with perhaps the only unifying factor being a sense of seediness, a sort of shabbiness, some midnight radio feel hard to define. There’s no sense of battle between vocalist and band – instead, it’s a wonderful blend.

Interestingly, the songs here appear to be a further examination of currents that’ve always been present in the work of SixFtHick. The Lap Of Luxury’s Last Lullaby, for example, hinted at some of the quieter backwaters of darkness that Gentle Ben And His Sensitive Side explore. And with most of its brace of songs clocking in under three minutes, The Beginning Of The End offers a series of enigmatic portraits that whet the appetite. Falling In Love offers a nice twist on the ideas of the Elvis tune of the same name, while Moonlight Sea makes a watery demise sound appealing in a half-drunk sort of way. Most immediate of all, however, is I Don’t Think She Loves Me – a half-Spanish, half-English, all passion tune adorned in handclaps and rodeo screams. It’s difficult to get anything other than an oblique view of what’s happening, but like a keyhole vision, the tales intrigue.

If you’ve ever seen Gentle Ben… live, you’ll know that one of the ensemble’s strengths is the way they can move from whip-cracking strength to heart-on-sleeve po’boy-ism in the sweep of a verse. With some bands, recording songs of this nature robs them of the shamanic power that a gig can have, alcohol-enhanced or not. Thankfully, the way Ben Corbett strides the stage, an elegant, razor-cheekboned huckster badboy, flamenco-stepping through the smoke to croon or wail with furrowed brow, supported by his supple band – has survived the transition to tape. It’s theatrical, yes, but it all just works. I Can’t Hurt You is a great example. A tale of weeping and beating, it veers between the low-key and the swing-arsed rocking – but without any sense of the emotional release being ill-considered or forced. Similarly, the lupine derangement of the group is also in evidence on Spell Of The Moon. A howling Corbett exhorts the moon to shine down on him while circling tones – like a persistent ringing in the ears, echoed tenfold – run rings around the band’s subtly tidal Mexican lament. The vocal line stops, and the two styles – south-of-the-border versus UFO – try to outpace each other, before the song ends without a feel of a victor. Uneasiness prevails; uneasiness clothed in insanity. Poisonous spines and retribution coming down the hall: that’s what, more than anything else, these songs sound like.

The album ends with the plaintive Happiness, a song that begins with the sound of footsteps. It’s as if – armed only with a guitar – Ben’s providing an apology for all that’s gone before, Jimmie Rodgers-style. All the grandeur and the drama of the album are prologue: “I’m skippin’ town while you are cryin’,” he laments, a masochist who no longer desires happiness or the solace of togetherness. Hell, the litany of things you could do to him without retribution – throw his possessions in the rain, tell people he’s gone nuts, ‘cause it doesn’t matter – is surpassed only by the sense of resignation that’s communicated to us, “the pearl before the swine”. Faintly discernable backing vocals give a ghostly feel to what turns out to be the perfect closer.

Short and sweet, The Beginning Of The End is a cocktail of dangerous beauty. Head for nearest velvet-draped establishment in your finest rayon and get ready to toast them, because if this is any indicator of Gentle Ben And His Sensitive Side’s potential, the main course will be a killer.

Literally.