The Guardian gave the Phoenix Foundation's last album five stars. Can their new one reach the same giddy heights?

Five albums into their career, and the Phoenix Foundation – long critical and popular favourites in their native New Zealand – are making bigger and bigger waves away from home. To match their increasing impact, they're making bigger and bigger music, too: Fandango is an epic of an album that has prompted Samuel F Scott, one of the band's two frontmen, to describe it as "Test match music".

Writing for this site last month, he expanded on that description: "I was, of course, suggesting that it is ridiculously long but a highly rewarding experience for those who can spend some time with it." It's an album of varied moods and styles – both 70s Pink Floyd and smooth 80s pop rear their heads – but it's also got the gentle melancholy that defined the heyday of the great Flying Nun label.

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

• Fandango is released next Monday on Memphis Industries and you can pre-order it here. The band tour the UK in May. You can find details here.

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