We get so much music these days that I sometimes wonder if we have stopped really listening to it.

It flashes past like rolling news; all car crashes, lust, gossip and filler. You stop taking in it after a while. Records/bands come and go without context (heaven help the groups who posses a sense of mystery, because we’re not listening long enough to solve it).

It’s all surface noise. We only listen to the point of hearing what we want to hear (what we’ve been told hear?) and then move on.

In this era of the half-listen, the new ALT-J single ‘Matilda’ arrived a couple of days ago and it sounded, well, pretty enough. It wasn’t a disappointment. It classically filled a moment.

Which is where I’ve been going wrong: several plays later, after listening again (really listening), this is a magical record. It makes you want to replay it (to really listen to it).

It is spell binding in its simplicity and sensitivity (enough that you want to be alone with it; to spend three and a half minutes away from the blather and nonsense). There is hardly anything going on, yet what is there – the little rolling rhythm, swept along by a warm, shiny guitar and that rich, fragile vocal….all this sounds gorgeous.

It is so quiet in a way, but the space/near-silence is deafening; the little details – that dramatic bass drum sound just before the break – giving it added texture.

If I could, I’d go round to their next rehearsal and shake their hands one by one.

You can hear it here. Or get it on I-Tunes now.