The third album from Melbourne’s The Ancients is a record that hurtles, ambles and breezes by with equal amounts of intricate musicality and simple skewed-pop broad strokes. There is a wistful 60s folk tinge to songs like House of Cards, the lighter contrast to their more layered and dense psych excursions such as the shoegaze haze of Hamster and the epic Molokai that manages to sound like Boo Radleys, High Llamas and Ariel Pink all at the same time. Ultimately Night Bus is a gorgeous, wide-ranging melancholic pop album that embraces sonic friction, frayed edges and melodic beauty with equal aplomb.

Chris Familton

Night Bus is out now on Chapter Music

this review was first published in The Music