There’s a swagger about Jimmy Pinch’s album Symptoms Of A Lean Condition, an aura of cool self-possession that hangs over the whole enterprise like a fog of upmarket aftershave.

And why the hell not? The geezer has earned his stripes, in a career that’s careened from indie success to cinematic glory to BBC recognition and maturing, in midlife, as the vital nucleus of the Totnes gearhead scene, where his homely guitar workshop thrives to this day.

If you dig the blues, you’re in for a treat. From the irresistible opening riff of Riding High, to the Clapton-coded heavy artillery of absolute belter G.A.S., the man never met a seventh he couldn’t dominate, a third he wouldn’t wrangle to within an inch of its life.

Still, twelve-bar-by-numbers it ain’t. Jimmy Pinch, the songwriter, has a magpie knack for a nifty hook. Try and get the lick from My Bad out of your head, or not beam with pure joy them moment those good-ole-boy Appalachian harmonies from Thruxton kick in. It’s good stuff, is what I’m saying. The uncut shit.

Being English, there levity too – gags, if you like, in spades. Too Heavy is a tongue-in-cheek black comedy about the perils of clumsy lovemaking on flimsy furniture. Hot Potato dispenses hilarious, tongue-in-cheek narcissism wreathed in Spike Milligan wordplay.

Leaving aside haunting Floyd-inspired coda The Doldrums, for me the emotional journey concludes with a brace of weepies. Black Sheep Of The Family, an all-too relatable slow burner, is disarming enough. For me, the real emotional highlight is Motorcycles On The Moon. Tender, spacious, laced with a lifetime’s worth of disappointment and failure and optimism and just sheer fucking joy.

Surely, his best work.

Andy Hill