This isn't any old indie-folk. This is M&S indie folk. You can smell the motes of dust floating from reverberating acoustic strings. The sound is lush, the vocals are pitch-perfect, mellifluous harmonies ooze from every tune.  But can we ever settle for sonic refinement when ultimately the content is so depressingly empty and insubstantial?This release is all shiny coat and fluttering eyelashes; sadly it is also lacking in guts, heart and personality.

The 'Eat / Sleep' EP tries its damnedest to be touching and romantic, but fails to engage or stir me to anything other than a gnawing irritation at the smug pleasantness of it all. Perhaps that says more about how much more soul-baring this kind of music has left to give that has not already been poured out thousands of times.

That said, 'Will You Settle Down' is a shrewd choice of opening gambit. It's the one track with a memorable hook, and has a good chance of finding its way onto radios across the land. For all its cloying happy-clappyness, it's something of a catchy little ear-worm, and Karl Francis' voice has a touch of The Bluetones' Mark Morriss about it. 'Sweetheart' starts promisingly, with cavernous 60's reverb over the vocal intro, but just as I want it to go all Roy Orbison, it meanders down a wanky dead-end. My favourite part of this EP is the two minutes of cosmic noise at the end of 'Sleep by my Side'. It sounds like something dreamt up by Harmonia in a barn in Forst. The finely-crafted rustic balladry preceding it is far less interesting.

'A Once Shattered Ideal' boasts a hideous celt-folk intro, crossing the line into that evil underworld of waistcoat wearing Mumford zombies stalking the land shooting p(h)easants and terrifying the villagers with their earnest harmonies. I am in no doubt of the noble intentions at work here, but this is music for newly-weds to look through carpet samples to. The desire to please can be a curse.