Reading the Howl Quartet’s PR material, replete with phrases like “wild, expressive” and “outright untamed”, it is hard to correlate this with Airglow. Their second album has a ruminative combination of well-judged musical textures based on unsurprising chord changes and conventional time signatures. It is very good, in fact – just not especially wild or untamed.

As an acoustic quartet led by two saxophones, the emphasis is very much on melodic composition – and the results are often beguiling.

The elegiac title track which opens Airglow introduces the four players’ voices in an unhurried way, Harry Brunt’s tenor giving way to Dan Smith’s alto over Pete Komor’s rich and assured intonation on double bass. Matt Parkinson’s quietly reliable drums carry the track along easily, whereas for the bustling ‘Smudge’ he gets to roil away more emphatically.

There’s an elaborate three-part melodic arrangement to ‘Flow’ that recalls the neo-classical saxophone duo ‘Invention No.13’ from the band’s 2021 debut album Life As We See It – not wild but elegant, for sure.

The album conveys a strong sense of compatibility between the players, the two horns often playing like-mindedly in the same register, the drums catching their phrasing with the bass nicely counterposed. While their individual solo playing is smart and effective it is always part of a collective sound running through all nine tracks, making Airglow an assured statement of identity from a band that has very much found its feet.