On an early listen, the first three teasers of Snowy Band’s sophomore album Alternate Endings seem the suggest the forthcoming album will play as a natural continuation to their stunning debut Audio Commentary. Like its predecessor, each track builds around Snowy’s hypnotic blur of delicate home recording and expansive band dynamics, blending subdued hooks, sparse instrumental interplay and evocative grooves together elegantly.

But with his latest music, and noticeably on ‘Call It A Day’, Snowy’s constant willingness to subvert expectations is becoming more and more pronounced; for every intricate nylon string flourish there’s an equally extravagant electric guitar moment, and more often than not, the most stirring moments are accompanied by weary refrains that are delivered barely above a whisper. Similarly, beneath his wide-eyed sincerity, the sly wrinkle of humour that’s always underscored Snowy’s music is more apparent - whether he’s reminding a lover that he’d sworn to kill anything they’d like, telling us about the Airbnb where he’ll die or if he’s “praying to God in a carpark”.

As the press release poetically explains, “‘Call It A Day’ implies the best of both sides of the sentiment: seemingly accepting with grace that 'what is done is done' before being skewed existentially with the tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-Shakespearean turn "It ends the same / By any other name”. Perhaps this is what makes ‘Call It A Day’ most powerful though; that although the track can sprawl over an ebbing groove for five minutes to the tune of Snowy admitting defeat against the inevitable, there’s a reliable smirk beneath the track that makes the fatigue feels just as rousing.

Paired with a new film clip (created by frequent collaborators Jordan Thompson and Nathalie Pavlovic), we’re offered an extra dose of typical Snowy trickery. Shot in reverse with some fancy green screen action involved, the clip is a bit of a gag, but there’s a sense of earnestness in there too that plays as a bit of a metaphor for Snowy Band’s music. Whether it’s disorientating guitar work, deceptive lyrics or Snowy literally coughing milk up over himself, there’s nothing packed into ‘Call It A Day’ that we can’t make sense of ourselves - it’s just that we often need to wait for the track to unravel a little further for the trick to be revealed to us.