John Grant’s fourth solo studio album – “Love Is Magic” – is, so far, possibly the least of Grant’s solo albums. Gone are the nakedly vulnerable songs, the emotional baritone, the sound of a torch-singer-surrounded-by-computers, that characterised his more touching work – there’s a love of technology here that sometimes overshadows the work, the songs, and sometimes the art is lost in the possibilities. Like Darth Vader in the end days, Grant’s latest record is “more machine than man”, and whilst it might be very, very good, it’s not the record I was hoping for.

Built on the foundations of “Mr.Dynamite”, the album that Grant recorded as part of studio project Creepshow, this is perhaps the flipside of that. “Mr Dynamite” is a hard record to love, of somewhat abstract musical experiments and relatively meaningless songs (that is, missing the searing honesty and personal injection of sincerity that made his previous solo albums), and just didn’t quite work for me. With what seems like the same studio team, this album is the A-sides to that albums B-sides. The two feel cut from different sides of the same cloth.

“Love Is Magic” is though, the least of Grants solo albums : For me, the combination of vulnerability, wit, and music was at its peak with “Pale Green Ghosts” – and whilst 2015’s “Grey Tickles, Black Pressure” was almost as good, almost isn’t the same. Here, Grants retro love of technology and electronica – and the sometimes overbearing lyrical references – overshadow the raw heart of the earlier songs. Maybe John is happier and I like Sad John. However here, the songs are more measured. Less raw. In cases like this, it is not a surprise when an artist becomes bigger, and matures, to start to conceal more, to write less directly, whether intentional or not, and to start to be in a form of code. The tenderness of the songs that Grant gave us before seems blunter and more concealed now, surrounded by references and jokes. The songs need to be deciphered. Sincerity is a superpower.

So “Love Is Magic” is a difficult album to love. It opens with “Metamorphosis” a tempo-changing set of unconnected phrases and lyrics that communicates nothing so much as confusion and a checklist, much like some of Nirvana’s later songs, where try to decipher what was actually being said was a practical impossibility amongst the non-sequiters and jargon. At the heart of this, Grant still has his aces up his sleeve. His ability to write a stunning couplet is undiminished : but both “Metamorphosis” and “Diet Gum” are the two least effective songs of his solo years.

Following that is “Love Is Magic”, the most optimistic song he’s ever written. It’s Grant at his best, hit level, and brutally funny. When Grant is at his best, he disarms with humour but also a piercing, beautiful honesty. It’s an instant classic of his type. And it’s followed by “Tempest” which turns a conceit of ancient video games into a whole new world – and it’s a fine, fine song. A very good John Grant song. Hardly anyone can write a better song. To know that he is capable of songs as powerful and cutting as “It Doesn’t Matter To Him”, and to see that same talent trudging through, say, something like “Diet Gum” is a an act of knowing underachievement.

Unlike his other albums, “Love Is Magic” might be a struggle to love. The songs seems hidden in barnacles or in references that not everyone who ever spent all of 1983 in a video arcade will ever get or know. And that’s not to say it’s bad – because this album definitely isn’t – it’s just harder to love, harder to reach, and the sincerity is hidden sometimes.

There’s great songs – such as “Is He Strange?” and “Touch And Go” – and terrible ones that almost undo all the good work of the rest of the album. It’s by no means his best record, but one that I will grow to love more in time.