Cursed Sleep's title gives the game away - blues, country-tinged melancholia helped along by an Icelandic string quartet and the vocal duetting of Dawn McCarthy from the Faun Fables. Like the forthcoming album, the package is produced by Bjork-collaborator Valgeir Sigursdsson, but despite the Nordic surroundings, Oldham doesn't stray from his usual modus operandi, offering up dark bass-heavy Americana on additional tracks The Signifying Wolf (complete with lupine howls) and a slow, haunting midnight prayer in God's Small Song, the sound of empty dust-bowl prairies long cleared out of hope giving way to the slow strumming of a lone guitar amidst tortured violins. Next to these, Cursed Sleep sounded positively upbeat (or as close to it as Oldham is ever likely to get).

If this is a good indication of what's to come from the album, expect more of the usual - Americana miserabilism you just can't help but love.

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