**4 stars**

"Kylie will probably sell more records by lunchtime than Bluebottle Kiss will in a year, but those who prefer the slow-burning beauty of Come Across will be investing in one of the best rock albums of the year.

The Sydney band has been making atmospheric rock music for a decade, eventually incorporating their youthful noisy streak with maturing melodic strengths on last years' wonderful Revenge is Slow.

There's no drop in quality with Come Across, where the band assists singer and songwriter Jamie Hutchings to create an album that deserves to sit on your shelf alongside other classic Australian rock albums such as The Triffids Born Sandy Devotional or Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call.

Hutching's lyrics (poetic but never overblown) aren't particularly located in Australian settings yet, as with the Triffids, this is music with a strong sense of wide open spaces, shimmering mirages on the horizon, the ebb and flow of slow breakers on a distant beach.

Just check those evocative, glistening guitars on tunes such as the pivotal So Slow, which pairs a troubled relationship with strong, colourful brushstrokes, while building up the kind of sonic intensity the Neil Young and Crazy Horse conjured on last weeks' tour.

Bluebottle Kiss can be tender, bruised, as on the waltz, Scouthall
("There's the sea where you've left us no trace"), or the haunting ballad, Can I Keep You. And they can whisper and rage in the course of a song, as they do in the magnificent Everything Begins and Ends at Exactly the Right Time, on which Hutching's guitar floats then stings.

There can't be too many bands around whose name so accurately reflects their sound."