Serpentine, the third and finest recent outing from Julie Tippetts and Martin Archer, feels less epic and less fantastic than 2011's Tales of FiNiN. It's even billed as their pop album, though this pop is offbeat and oblique and dipped in dub: Archer channels Adrian Sherwood as well as Leafcutter John, while Tippetts sits somewhere between Beth Gibbons, Mingus-era Joni Mitchell and an English Sidsel Endresen. (She is also credited with ‘amplified doll’s house', and you won't find the likes of Ke$ha playing that.) Even so, with at least relatively straightforward songs, and lyrics that focus on the natural world, Serpentine follows FiNiN like a welcome book of Alice Munro short stories after The Lord Of The Rings. Tippetts' spoken word sections may not be to all tastes, but fans of Sunset Glow will know that, back in the mid-1970s, she was startlingly strong at the point where song form meets melting point. She still is.