“A few hundred megabytes on iTunes no-one will ever listen to”

This is how Andy Regan, aka as (and sole member of) Pagan Wanderer Lu, describes his latest album on its greatest track, the epically titled ‘God in His Wisdom and Compassion Spares the Mona Lisa from Being Engulfed by the Dying Sun’. The song is a revelatory moment on what was already, up to this point, a banging record: it’s the moment the album miraculously becomes a sentient and self-aware being entirely of its own making; it’s the moment the album transcends pop music and becomes a humanist tract on modern living; it’s the moment I realised that I really fucking love this record.

Up to this track, Regan has rattled through four massively enjoyable and catchy electronica-influenced pop tracks that explore, provocatively and insightfully, the banality and tedium of day-to-day existence (‘Banish Negative Thoughts’), the scientific rationalist trying to wrap his brain around the metaphysical concept of love (‘Chemicals Like You’), the banality of the music industry (‘Crustaceans As Castanets’), and the general apathy of the British population (‘The Great British Public Becomes Self-Aware’). Across the course of these tracks Regan proves himself as a songwriter with an ear for a hook that won’t let go, and as a lyricist capable of tackling complicated themes and not reducing them to a cheeky soundbite or coming across as remotely self-important. When, later, on the title track, Regan’s central character blames his entire life’s ills on the titular ‘European Monsoon’ – “I was prevented from becoming an informed member / of society by the inclement weather” – there’s a tone of self-deprecation rather than a sneering holier-than-thou attitude that the song could have so easily fallen into. The lyrics are so wonderfully erudite, and the music so bouncily playful, that even when this record puts a foot wrong (‘Westminster Quarters’’ marching drum and heavily laid-on synthesised strings is slightly misjudged), it’s a charming and forgivable foot that you don’t mind being put wrong because you know that sooner or later it’s going to be put right again. And sure enough, Regan concludes the song with a bizarrely moving refrain of “girl come home soon / I sure miss you” to the tune of the Westminster Chimes / the Big Ben music / the “same old Chelsea, always cheating” chant, depending on your cultural frames of reference.

‘God in His Wisdom…’, though, really steals the show here. Slowly building with a discordant wall of feedback, Regan sets out the song’s intentions in the opening lyric: “If there is not God’s-eye view / Then there is no objective truth.” A minute and a half in, the feedback drops away to nothing but a gentle acoustic progression as Regan wonders “will all the Pharaohs attempts to cheat death be any match for entropy?” Probably the best pop song to ever take more inspiration from Richard Feynman than Richard Thompson.