They’re surfers, they build their own effects pedals and they once sketched out the designs for a synthesiser played entirely by pigeons – but on their second full-length album, the endlessly inventive Isle Of Wight five-piece Plastic Mermaids are facing their dark side.

At the heart of Plastic Mermaids is the creative force of two brothers, Douglas and Jamie Richards, sons of a Gurnard boat-builder, who approach life like an art project, putting as much love into their band’s visual concepts and staging as they have into their unique brand of psych-rock and electronica.

It’s Not Comfortable To Growexplores heartbreak from many different angles, in smart refractions of contrasting feeling – from the defiant 'Disco Wings' (“It’s my life and I don’t care if I’m right or wrong”), which is inspired by the moments you see light at the end of the tunnel, to 'Something Better', their rawest song yet, in which, over a deceptively playful waltz-time riff, Douglas delivers a stunning, semi-improvised monologue of pain.