When Savages first emerged and released their debut album Silence Yourself in 2013, the comparisons with bands like Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees were so commonplace that it almost feels like a cliché to be commenting on them at all. It was a lazy and completely reductive analysis of what Savages had achieved. Besides, if one were to make a comparison between Savages and other bands with a moody aesthetic and angular guitar lines, in this case it would be more appropriate, at least in terms of trajectory, to refer to the post-punk revival bands of the early noughties. The likes of Interpol, The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand all arrived with debut albums that seemed to present the finished package. The problem was where they went from there; everything they had to say had been said. Arguably Savages faced a similar problem; so refined and purposeful was Silence Yourself. Yet they have managed to do what their predecessors couldn’t, and create an album that is a step up in almost every sense.

Although largely well-received, Savages were not wholly spared criticism. They were accused of being rather serious – a charge not entirely without justification given the essay they wrote for the album’s cover – and of only operating at two tempos: the pummelling, quicker tracks and the more dirge-like slower ones. Yet the band have addressed these issues head on. For one, there’s a real sonic dynamism to the record. The Answer comes thrashing out of the speakers, opening the album with a churning guitar line and Jehnny Beth’s typically pointed vocals, yet it’s followed by a dance-like groove on Evil. Surrender may start with a yawning, billowing drone but it morphs into one of Savages’s most accessible songs yet, with a remarkably poppy one-word chorus.

Savages’s new lyrical fixation on love, both for life itself and each other, seems to have been a particularly fertile soil. It would be hard for their critics to argue that they are still too po-faced, as there are glimmers of a dark sense of humour coming through. The album opens with the line “if you don’t love me, you don’t love anybody” which manages to be both threatening and mocking of the self-absorption that comes with passion. On Sad Person Beth mischievously claims that “I’m not gonna hurt you, ‘cause I’m flirting you”, as though she doesn’t know that those two things are far from mutually exclusive. Although delivered in a typically strident tone, Beth must surely be aping Radiohead’s Karma Police on T.I.W.Y.G. when she declares “this is what you get when you mess with love.” One can’t imagine any listeners would have much trouble deciding whether Beth or Thom Yorke would provide the more sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

Savages do more than just poke fun at the complexities of love, though. This is than the quasi-title track and mission statement, Adore, which stands as the highlight of their career to date. The songs opens sparsely with a low, rumbling bassline reminiscent of Nick Cave, before it bursts to life with an oddly transcendent chorus as Beth sings “maybe I will die maybe tomorrow.” Yet the song arguably saves the best till last, as it climaxes in a noise-rock crescendo and Beth bellowing that she adores life. Such are the quirks of fate, but lines like “I understand the urgency of life” have taken on a much greater significance since the events in Paris and Savages’s pointed effort to play there shortly after.

The only real disappointment is the closing track, Mechanics, which is heavy on the atmosphere but rather lacking in tune. It’s not positively bad though, and does nothing to take away from what is a triumph of a record. Many bands can show promise. A select few have figured out, as Savages have, how to deliver it here and now.