A line taken from Sesame, a track on Sweet Spot, sounds particularly conspicuous once you’ve heard the album in its entirety. “This will only work if you let go,” Ciara O’Flynn sings in her best siren-like vocal. “Trust me, I know the way to go.” One of the biggest issues with Pinhole’s debut album, however, is that its meandering sense of direction often feels as if it may lead off the edge of a cliff rather than to utopia. Trust, as the saying goes, is earned and not given.

There is a certain charm to making it up as you go along, but that is not to damn this Cork- and Dingle-based duo with faint praise. O’Flynn and synth player Mark McLoughlin clearly have a multitude of bright ideas, yet it often feels as if they are unable to distil these overlong songs into a palatable pop package. Pinhole is something of a side project for both: the vocalist and violinist is an archaeologist by trade, while her bandmate is a documentary film-maker. In this avant-garde musical project they aim to “create otherworldly music together to process [their] shared reality”, with tracks written about everything from the marriage referendum and feminism to loved ones slipping into old age and tributes to friends who lost their lives tragically.

They’re lofty and often weighty topics, but when Pinhole hit the mark – as heard on the tremulous boho clatter of the title track, which brushes up against Portishead and early Goldfrapp – it’s a theatrical delight. The burbling electronic undercurrent of I Want Desire and the bombastic build of 6 Kenley Avenue are intriguing, while the taut strut and gleeful campness of Oh No recalls Sparks or Mercury Rev in parts. Elsewhere it seems that the pair’s ambition, or perhaps their inexperience, overwhelms them. All too often there is an unfinished, demo feel to songs, as on Pinhole or Dust Mote, or their grand plans for an epic climax veer closer to am-dram musical theatre. The result is an album with undeniable potential but one that is too wrapped up in itself to be fully convincing.