Jeremy Warmsley made his name in the mid-00s with a strain of intelligent, introspective and gently synthy folk-pop that, though never massively popular, now feels hugely redolent of the era. Two albums in, the Londoner swapped indie sad-laddery for deliciously kitsch earworms as one half of Summer Camp. More recently, he has carved out a successful sideline in film and TV soundtracking.

Clearly, however, Warmsley’s appetite for the singer-songwriter life remains, and in 2019 he committed to creating and releasing a new song every month. The results constitute A Year, an album that ties the changing of the seasons to the spark, flame and fizzling out of a new romance; an emotional bell curve Warmsley cleverly mirrors in the album’s ever-shifting sound. The melancholic, searching springtime songs nod to Simon and Garfunkel; strange, jerking time signatures herald the unsettling elation of infatuation; hints of eurodance and new wave echo a fractious summer. Finally, an autumn breakup brings the mumble of Arthur Russell-style strings and shades of restorative soul.

To Warmsley’s credit, all this conspicuous genre-hopping doesn’t disrupt the flow of the record: everything is united by its maker’s homespun, slightly weedy sensibility and his ear for infectious melody. At the same time, the album’s conceptual basis and multitude of pop tropes make it seem more like a thoughtful showcase of songwriting talent than a loud statement of solo-artist intent. After a decade out of the game, Warmsley’s return as a singer-songwriter is not so much a stop-the-presses comeback as a modest reminder of his considerable skills.