It’s somehow hard to believe that Taylor Kirk, the man behind Timber Timbre, is Canadian, so drenched in the sweat of the American Deep south. Kirk’s world is dark, brooding and ever so slightly threatening, combining folk, blues and country to conjure up a world in which – as he puts it on No Bold Villain – “One of us is not normal / And it might not be you”. Throw in wheezing organs, out-of-tune saloon pianos and vocals treated with a claustrophobic reverb and it’s enough to make you reconsider that trip to Toronto.

Opener Demon Host begins mournfully, Kirk’s voice, accompanied only by guitar until near the song’s conclusion. The confusing succession of religious iconography sinks in slowly, with lines like “Death, she must have been your whale / A bone beneath the reaper’s veil” an indication of the voodoo-esque content to come – featuring a vast array of instrumentation laid down by his new band-mates, Mika Posen and Simon Trottier.

It’s Lay Down in the Tall Grass that takes the Oscar on this cinematic feast, however, its twitching groove combining Dr John, Tom Waits and Elvis Presley. It’s the perfect introduction to Kirk’s film noir environment of empty roadhouses and dusty jukeboxes, pitch-black swamplands and spooky shacks. You might not want to live there, as they say, but it’s an extraordinary place to visit.