In cases of unrequited love, we can spend years – decades, even – wondering… what if? For British indie duo Arliston, it’s a question that permeates their stunning debut album, Disappointment Machine, seeking closure even in the knowledge that it may never come.

Arliston are self-described “sad song specialists”. Their music is concerned with that particularly fraught time of life – the late twenties and early thirties – and all of the confusion that accompanies it. Yet the music itself is far from chaotic. Instead, it is steeped in an inky black pool of sparse but sprawling Americana; minimalist pianos are paired with gloopy synths and singer Jack Ratcliffe’s striking baritone. The songwriting, too, is stark but striking. We hear the faint buzzing of static, monologues, snatches of half-conversations. They are the sounds of someone stumbling and tripping their way through life, offering the listener an opportunity for a kind of melancholy catharsis.

The Brighton-born Ratcliffe met his future bandmate, guitarist and producer George Hasbury, who was raised between Devon and Tuscany, through a mutual friend. “I came to London in the same way that sheep follow herds,” Ratciffe says. Things didn’t get off to the most auspicious start. There was an unfortunate incident in a practise room in Tower Bridge, where he was electrocuted after his arm brushed against an exposed wire while he was hooked up to a pedal board. “I was flung cartoon-style to the other side of the room,” Ratcliffe recalls. “The studio manager was very angry at me, for some reason.”

Meanwhile, Hasbury was struggling to fit in after a patchy music education: “I didn’t have that link with British or American charts music that my peers did – I spent summers in Italy listening to a lot of Europop,” he says. “So yes, now I curse my parents for making me look like a naive imbecile.” But things picked up: Hasbury had been studying at Goldsmiths University, and became disillusioned with pursuing a career as a pop artist, anyway. “I went electric and a bit weird, which is probably the point that our friend thought we’d make a good match,” he says.

Indeed, between the two of them, they embody a specific kind of forlorn longing that fellow hopeless romantics will recognise all too well. “We’ve always loved hardcore misery,” Ratcliffe jokes, citing influences such as The National, Bon Iver and Damian Rice. Disappointment Machine was, extraordinarily, written in the span of just two weeks, after he went through a “romantic entanglement” in October last year.

“It was a classic case of unrequited love, but for some reason it hit me in a really vulnerable spot,” he says. Fresh out of a three-year relationship, he was stunned to realise the depth of his feelings in comparison to what was, he admits, a somewhat tepid reaction to his recent breakup. “I just started writing all this stuff down on my phone, more as a tool for catharsis than anything else,” he says. “But a lot of it ended up on this album.”

Take ‘Time Lost’, a song which beautifully encapsulates the ache of knowing you’ll never get another chance. It opens on muffled, descending piano chords; the barely perceptible creak of a pedal. Synths murmur beneath the surface, as the track continues to build with the calm, steady grace of dawn over frost-bitten ground. Those first tendrils of sunlight bloom; Ratcliffe casts his mind back. “You knew what you wanted to say/ But I didn’t want to talk about it,” he sings, voice dark and full of regret.

“I think we all know that if your love for someone was reciprocated, you would learn about the fallibility of that person, their flaws,” he says. “But because it’s unrequited, they stay forever in that status of ‘perfect’.”

The “incident” Ratcliffe refers to is addressed on ‘What Did I Think Would Happen’, for which he deploys a piercing falsetto to dramatic contrast against his lower register. Lyrics flicker between the despondent chorus and verses that offer snapshots of different scenes from that night. The song builds in a strangely discordant manner, all wheezes of brass and clamouring piano, ultimately subsididing into a heartrending silence.

Much like Matt Beringer’s band, there’s a sly humour to Arliston’s music that isn’t always immediately evident. That is, perhaps, with the exception of songs such as ‘Sleep Well Bean’, named in honour of The National’s 2017 album, Sleep Well Beast. Here, Ratcliffe fesses up: “I’m essentially admitting that I was never very cool,” he says, grinning. There are wistful references to the effortlessly cool – James Bond, James Dean – but no, he’s not them, he’s “Mr F***ing Bean”. Peep Show fans, meanwhile, will surely clock the reference on “Monks of Lindisfarne”.

“I was writing all these messages for the woman I was in love with, and in one of them I joked that I’d probably go and become a monk if she went away,” Ratcliffe recalls. “I made the reference assuming she knew Peep Show, and in hindsight, she probably didn’t…” Fans will enjoy the song regardless, thanks to his tender vocal delivery and Hasbury’s gorgeous guitar tones. “Tell me I don’t need it/ That I’m better off,” Ratcliffe demands through a vocoder, drowning out ghostly echoes of saxophone.

On other songs, such as ‘C.A.T.S’ and ‘The Older I Get’, he finds himself wondering how determined our futures are, and reassessing tired notions of success. “Spent the whole day in, going nowhere/ The sun chasing me across the sofa,” he mutters on ‘C.A.T.S’... “I don’t think I’m destined for anything explosive anymore.” Is it a resignation, to the prospect of an unhappy ending, or a realisation of a different sort? On ‘The Older I Get’, death is no longer the abstract concept it was in your twenties: “You start to realise, oh s***, not only is time passing, but have I wasted giant chunks of it as well?” Ratcliffe says.

Disappointment Machine is arranged in a broad narrative arc, taking the listener from that initial, devastating heartbreak to something bordering acceptance, or hope. So, you have the title track, on which Ratcliffe bleakly chastises himself for becoming stuck in a repeat pattern of behaviour, even as he tries to minimise his problems against a backdrop of global chaos. “It doesn’t work,” he shrugs. “It won’t ever stop you from feeling the way you’re feeling.”

‘Nests’, near the heart of the record, offers rose-tinted flickers of gratitude, ensconced by tentative bursts of synths and an atmospheric, shuffling beat. And on closer ‘Stay in Brixton’, we hear optimism in the lilting melodies and bright keys. “Things that remind me of you/ Are being overlaid with new memories/ And overdrawn and overhauled/ So maybe I can stay in Brixton afterall.”

“It’s the catharsis song, and probably the only truly positive one on the record,” Ratcliffe acknowledges. “Eventually, in time, those difficult memories get replaced with something brighter.” And so the album closes on hope, and the romantic glide of violins. Perhaps these boys think they’re “Disappointment Machines”, but their debut album is anything but.