These words are particularly apt when applied to The Weeping Willows’ second album, Before Darkness Comes A-Callin’. Recorded in Los Angeles with multiple Grammy winner, Ryan Freeland and a small cast of players hand-picked to leave all the right gaps and spaces, this record should be received as a mature, melancholic sequel to their debut. But listen a little harder and you’ll hear that the record is filled with that all of that wonder, magic and joy of which Nick Cave speaks.

That’s hardly surprising because, in a way, every song penned by The Weeping Willows is a love song. They’d deny that, of course. These tracks, they’d claim, are works of imagination – tales of cruelty, tragedy, murder and betrayal, all populated by gamblers, sinners, infidels and travelling salesmen (read: wandering musicians). Ask Andy or Laura to define their work and they’d probably hit you with phrases like “cautionary tales”, “murder ballads” or simply “folk songs”, but in truth these are love songs – each and every one of them.

How are they love songs, you ask? Because The Weeping Willows are lovers – they are devoted to each other and to the life of the artist in seemingly equal measure. Have you seen them perform together? Have you seen the knowing glances they exchange as they harmonise their eerie, at times surreal lyrics over Andy’s patient, timeless ¾ strum? Think back to those performances, those moments of chemistry in its purist form, then try to convince yourself that The Weeping Willows were not singing a love song. Every note plucked or sung by Andy and Laura is a work of love. Every dark hour spent huddled together refining their sound in the dimly-lit backroom of their home on the Southern outskirts of Melbourne is a labour of love.