“Pop picking is a fast ‘n’ furious business. Bauer were once described by an American reviewer, curiously echoing Cold War rhetoric, as giving ‘more bang for your guilder’. Time has moved on: the very much contemporary Baueresque imparts more ping for your euro.

Any pigeon-holes are best set sensibly aside. Award winners and chart contenders, Bauer employ a fusion of styles, the ears catching a tantalising musical hotchpotch, distinctly original and yet echoing an astistic and epochal divergency from pre-rock to now, with Broadway, Hollywood and Hilversum simmering in the pot.

Baueresque reveals new dimensions to this aural ancestry. The melodic structure is embellished by lyrics that bewitch and bewilder, and underpinned by a distinctive keyboard sound. Several banks of them are wedged into Bauer’s broom-cupboard studio in Amsterdam.

This is the third album from the delightful queasy-listening combo. It’s the past, the present and the future, all in one disc.

Press to play and let go.”