If you're wondering why Bombay Bicycle Club have taken so long to release their fourth album, it might be worth taking a look at bassist Ed Nash's blog. You'll discover the antics of four men in their early twenties roaming the world on a relentless touring schedule. Yet rather than stifling their studio output, their dedication to touring has defined their brilliant new album, So Long, See You Tomorrow. The band's latest effort is musically imprinted with their travels to India, Turkey and Tokyo, which have helped make the new record their most exciting to date.

After hearing the swelling strings and fuzzy bass of opener Overdone, you could easily to forget that this is the same band who broke onto the scene with I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose in 2009. Since their debut, Bombay Bicycle Club have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for musical reinvention in an effort to shed their association with jangly indie rock.

Lead single Carry Me bursts into life with pounding synths before falling into an ethereal breakdown with the haunting refrain "If anybody wants to know / Our love's getting old." Much of the album follows in this vein, mixing driven disco beats with cultural influences drawn from far beyond the anglosphere à la Arcade Fire's Reflektor.

Frontman Jack Steadman took on production duties for the album, though this is by no means new territory for him. He was been writing and remixing electronic music from a young age. The new album is interspersed with an eclectic mix of samples, including strings from a 1950s Bollywood film on Feel.

Another highlight is the title track, which starts out as a tender ballad focused around a recursive loop. It meanders softly before returning to that hypnotic sample. From here the tempo spirals out of control, swelling to a frenzied crescendo that closes the album.

The entire record glows with an intensely euphoric sound yet remains tinged with bittersweet melancholy. This is in part due to Steadman's introspective and often self-lacerating lyrics, which were written during a stint of self-imposed isolation whilst guitarist MacColl sent him poetry and prose for inspiration. It is this magpie-like tendency that makes Steadman such an interesting artist, drawing on numerous influences to create music that is nevertheless highly personal. So Long, See You Tomorrow could well have been a contrived attempt at experimentation. The actual result is both cohesive in style and exquisite in its execution.