CD CHOICE: Swanlights Rough Trade ****

Antony Hegarty's previous album ( The Crying Light) didn't have quite the same traction as his breakthrough (I Am a Bird Now), but it certainly didn't make a difference to Hegarty's fractured chamber music. Thankfully he remains a whimsical and capricious presence.

On Swanlights, Hegarty has taken another musical swerve, ditching the ponderous tones of previous works to go for a joyfully sweeping sound that hits the odd crescendo when no one is looking. Everything Is New, the opener, features just those three words as lyrics, but the music signals Hegarty's intent – waves of sound break as he eventually finds himself close to freeform jazz territory.

This layered, occasionally buoyant approach informs the album's best moment. On I'm In LoveHegarty is perilously close to pub singalong territory with an insistent refrain carried aloft by intricate instrumentation.

Not everything works. The title track, a discordant piano affair, keeps promising plenty but fails to deliver; when he sings "it's such a mystery to me", you can only concur and wonder why he didn't finish it properly. But he redeems himself with The Spirit Was Gone(the most I Am A BirdNow-sounding song here), all resounding piano chords and Cohenesque in execution, albeit with an almost pastoral musical background.

Björk crops up to splendid effect on Fletta, and their two vocal lines wrap themselves around each other in an almost spooky fashion. On the album highlight, Salt Silver Oxygen, Hegarty's in danger of giving the term "chamber pop" a good name.

There isn't a commercial immediacy about Swanlights, a looser and more open-ended affair than anything Hegarty has ever done before. As it slowly unravels, you're swept up by its lyrical beauty and how even its nooks and crannies contain more imagination, verve and spirit than anything else in this week's top 10. Antony's not drowning, he's waving.

And just to put it on the record: I really regret calling him “the indie Meat Loaf” when he spilled a drink over me in a bar in New York three years ago. See antonyandthe johnsons.com

Download tracks: Salt Silver Oxygen, Fletta, The Spirit Was Gone