What's remarkable is how little this record leans on the '90s signifiers that critics have always reached for when describing him. Yes, the Grohl-meets-Young rasp is present and correct, and yes, the guitars still carry that Teenage Fanclub shimmer roughed up with Nirvana grit. But those touchstones now feel like inherited furniture rather than a floor plan — familiar shapes in rooms that have been entirely redecorated. This is a songwriter mining his own past for material rather than borrowing someone else's.

Lead single "Miss Melody" sets the tone: a chorus built for shouting along to, undercut by lyrics that flinch at their own honesty. Its b-side, "French Bullet Blues," is looser and meaner, proof that Moran hasn't lost the swagger that got him compared to Weezer and the Pixies in his EP days. Then comes "Peter Pan," shot on film against a Queensland sunset for its video, and it's here the album reveals its actual ambitions. Gone is the scrappy urgency of "Casketcase" or "An Accident Waiting to Happen." In its place: a grown man reckoning with the boy who wouldn't grow up, delivered with a tenderness that never curdles into sentiment. It's the best thing he's written.

Moran's geography — London, Leamington Spa, Hobart, Adelaide, Edinburgh, now Brisbane — has always threatened to scatter his songwriting across too many reference points. Instead it's given this record a rootlessness that suits its subject matter perfectly. These are songs about the unreliability of home, sung by a man who's never quite settled on where that is. The production, warmer and less compressed than his debut, gives the quieter numbers room to ache without collapsing into mush, while the louder ones retain the edge that once had the Metro reaching for words like "irresistible."

Lyrically, this is Moran's most intimate work: raw where he used to be merely clever, romantic where he used to hide behind a smirk. The "fragile and indie-tastic" charm the Daily Record once clocked in his early EPs is still audible, but it's been joined by something closer to wisdom — the sound of a songwriter who's stopped performing vulnerability and started simply reporting it.

None of this means Moran has mellowed into safety. The hooks remain sharp, the guitars still bite when required, and there's a restlessness running underneath even the tenderest tracks that keeps sentimentality at bay. "Nostalgia is fine…but…" earns its ellipsis: it looks backward with genuine affection and then, wisely, keeps walking. A decade after Tom Robinson was rolling on 2015 for this band, it turns out the wait was worth it. This is Quiet as a Mouse's most complete statement yet, and very possibly Alex Moran's best record.