This morning I made fluffy banana pancakes from leftovers in the fridge, we sat and drank coffee, drenching our plates, the pancakes and crispy bacon in syrup and meandered through the morning papers with sticky fingers while I played back Vacilando Territory Blues for the tenth, maybe fifteenth time that week.

It was a beautiful morning, despite the grey Thames sky and puddles, our bellies rounded with a slow, sweet & salty, caffeine-laden breakfast (me with a newly kicking child doing little to aide digestion) we let J.Tillman do the talking.

J. Tillman’s previous album, Cancer & Delirium, might not have seemed so suited to familial morning repast, though I feel I need to excuse what I fear might be the audio equivalent of choosing a painstakingly produced labour of love to match your decor but since years of working in record stores and knowing musicians has made me rail against the usual type of anodyne rock marketed as the perfect soundtrack to my middle class dream that’s really not where I’m coming from. What I mean to say is that, while tracks on previous albums nudged each other on with similar pace and temperament throughout, this new collection has the wider ranging tempo and mood of a classically ‘complete’ album like Blood On The Tracks. Only the titular Vacilando Territory Blues and lonesome Master’s House keeps their production in the old four-track, one man/one guitar of the demo-esque Long May You Run J.Tillman, and even as a hardened one man/one guitar kind of girl I can concede that this wider instrumentation suits Tillman.

In fact, I’ll do more than concede- I’ll testify. It’s a glorious addition to the songs and his voice. Melodies forceful enough to draw intriguing arrangements, husky pleas rising over harmoniums & strings, clarinets, cellos and xylophones and tracks closing with chilling Bernard Herman-esque discordance. And the new lushness of Vacilando Territory Blues hasn’t forsaken any of J. Tillman’s now reliable shadowy, american lyricism which conjure dioramas such that what happens in the mind of the listener is a necessary part of the experience - a place where only personal experience, or individual vernacular can complete a picture and draw you so deeply into the music.

A few songs have been around for a while as demos or more fulsome recordings. Barter Blues; its previous incarnation a noisy (in comparison with the rest of his catalogue) folklorish tale lit by bloodred sunset has matured into a song which walks with a limp and its guns slung low. No less menacing for the sweeping cello and and a more organic beat, yet an unnerving sense that the narrator has encountered newer, darker stories between then and now.

Steel on Steel, I’m sure I heard before. It might have been a new track when he played in London last May, alone at the front of a stage with his guitar and corduroy jacket for company. Only now there’s a brass section. A host of people, of other musicians, and (whisper it, for it’s not the done thing in many folky type circles I hear) an irrepressible sense of fun. Not fun in a novelty act way, nor in a throwaway 3 and a half minute one, but a sense of collaboration - camaraderie, a live - alive feeling which doesn’t just emerge here but elsewhere on the album too.

Now for all I know, since I’ve read no liner notes or even seen artwork, the prodigious Tillman (drummer, singer, guitarist, construction worker) could have played each and every note himself. Alone in Packwood, Washington with a packet of Marlboro and a bottle of Jack Daniels for company. But I doubt it. There’s so much going on here, friendships, good times and a whole lot of noise - the loudest in many ways; New Imperial Grand Blues, has fast become my default ‘toothsome smiles on the underground’ track of choice. A riotous, runaway blues reimiscent of Highway 61 Revisited (my second Dylan reference, and don’t think I don’t know it) with a sense of unavoidable momentum and a hella catchy chorus, it’s one of those tracks which gives me a conspiratorial sideways grin and a desire to drink whisky.

This suite of songs feels most complete as an album (though I have sneaky suspicion I’m missing track 2 - unless the Seattle school system had significant issues with it’s numeracy programme). Songs which go soft and low, high and hard, full of love, delight, caution, rapport and trouble. And slightly noticeably this time not regret. That tinge of sadness which might well have drawn me to J.Tillman in the first place; the man who’s past echoed through empty rooms has been replaced with a more reflective, happier voice. Though I’m sure he’ll tell me again these aren’t autobiographical songs. They’re just stories.

There’s little surprise that I’d enjoy this album I suppose, but I truly do and it’s as if the kid who lost half his record collection to the Salvation Army’s over-zealous thrift drive has set about rebuilding what he lost in his own songs. This week I’ve been listening back to the Band a whole lot, a group of musicians who bear the weight of their inspiration buoyantly without ever feeling derivative and so this treads the same path. A wholesome, well rounded collection of songs; a day’s worth of feeling from the darkest hours before dawn through waking dappled sunlight, long into twilight and on to a party into the early hours. If this is a feeling called the blues it’s no wonder it’s my favourite colour.

J. Tillman - Vacilando Territory Blues is out soon on YerBird and Fargo in Europe. But I’ll have to ask about that.

J. Tillman - Above All Men