London is on fire again. Police sirens and apoplectic car alarms shriek themselves hoarse in the distance. A thick, black plume of acrid smoke rises menacingly over the city skyline from the ruins of Sony’s gutted Enfield supply warehouse. Masked looters are waging savage pitched battles against overwhelmed riot squads in the streets below. The rolling TV news coverage flicks between aerial views of a blazing inferno in Croydon and wobbly footage of young schoolgirls gleefully plundering ransacked branches of Currys and JD Sports. Meanwhile, tooled-up vigilante gangs comb the neighbourhood, threading their way through overturned cars, broken glass and burnt-out buses in search of thieving hooligans to smite. The Man has lost control and there’s a palpable end-of-the-world, anything goes sense of anarchy in the air. Just how do you soundtrack such a bleakly absurd, hallucinatory collapse of civilised society? Well in my case, after piling all the living room furniture up against the front door and pouring myself a stiff drink, I cracked open the shrink-wrap on the latest Alexander Tucker album.

Dorwytch was released on Thrill Jockey back in April, slipping somewhat under my radar. In a departure from Tucker’s previously sombre self-designed record covers, it’s adorned with some innocuous, Magritte-esque ceci n’est pas un nuage sleeve art – but that only serves to wrong-foot unwary virgin listeners and catch them off guard. Anticipating that this fifth long player wouldn’t veer too sharply away from his trademark woozy, brooding surrealism, when I did eventually pick it up I promptly shelved it. We were enjoying a balmy spell of unseasonable sunny springtime optimism – a post-winter wave of relief and cheerful exuberance that saw relaxed Londoners actually smiling benignly at each other in the street. I’d broken out the p-funk and wasn’t on the lookout for esoteric, haunting mood kill LPs. It seemed like a good idea to wait for a suitably tense, shadowy twilight environment in which to tackle this one. The record sat unplayed, gathering dust for months, until last night finally presented an opportune moment to give it a spin. I’d caught some of the enigmatic Kentish bard’s recent live performances, during which he’d revealed some tantalising new material, so I had a rough idea of what lay in store. But it still blew me completely away.

A humble, soft-spoken and strikingly hirsute figure, I’ve heard Alexander Tucker described in somewhat unflattering terms. During a gig at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury, a disapproving audience member whispered to her companion to inquire who “the dishevelled Sasquatch with the mandolin” was. Personally, I’d say he comes across more like a hairy medieval soothsayer – one who’s perhaps been abruptly zapped forward to the present day in some kind of deeply implausible Bill and Ted time-travelling phone box scenario. On first impression, you might expect him to growl and snarl like a grizzled death metal frontman or to bellow in a rich, melodramatic baritone. You’d be wrong, though. He may bear more than a passing physical resemblance to Captain Caveman, but the similarity ends there: Tucker’s startling and uniquely beguiling singing voice is a world apart from the gruffly cartoonish vocal stylings of Cavey’s Mel Blanc. To my ears it’s closer to a mesmeric, pitched-down Alison Moyet zoning out on temazepam – if you can imagine what that might sound like.

Dorwytch serves up a peculiar blend of glassy-eyed falsetto freak folk that’s saturated with ominous portent and eerie otherworldly arcana. It sees Tucker refining his sound and honing his production skills to create a more polished, finessed work than his previous releases on ATP Recordings. The distorted, gut-rumbling guitar drone of old is conspicuously absent, set aside in favour of a keener focus on hypnotic rhythm and melody, with a more diverse range of instruments added to the mix. Frenetic, looped cello phrases, psychedelic acousmatic belches, melancholic piano and spooky freeform percussion all combine to take this album to a higher level of doom-laden, demented genius. Tucker is joined in this endeavour by drummer Paul May, blues songwriter Duke Garwood, singer Jess Bryant and Guapo’s Daniel O’Sullivan. The end result evokes images of a motley band of troubadours performing in a fuggy, dimly lit 13th century village tavern. In my mind’s eye I could picture them regaling an enthralled gathering of ruddy-faced, mud-caked peasants with feverish tales of strange beasts wandering the land and other lyrical occult visions.

That said, it’s worth noting that not all of the songs are about hybrid human-plant swamp creatures and skeletal supernatural nomads. Those epic flights of netherworld fancy are counterbalanced by some more grounded introspective musings of an intimate and sometimes strangely mundane nature. Tucker shares with us memories of childhood holidays on the coast and describes his father’s collection of dusty knickknacks, among other oddities. The album is no less gripping for the inclusion of such humdrum compositions – if anything, they serve to heighten the tension. Tucker could perform a song recounting a trip to the corner shop for a pack of ciggies that would still elicit uneasy frissons and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Seek Dorwytch out and give it a thorough listen. Records this good are thin on the ground right now…particularly since the PIAS distribution centre went up in smoke.