The opening song "Pressure" starts with the sort of Arabic sounds Peter Murphy sometimes explores. Then Numan's voice comes in. I'm transported back to 1985. Has there ever been a voice so distinctive? Numan's timing was perfect, his voice suits the electronic medium, how would he have coped if he'd been born in the 60s? The ominous atmosphere is soon punctuated by industrial clanking. The waves of guitar that follow conjure Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine – the only album by NIN I ever felt the need to own.

There's a towering majesty to the sound, though some might find the pace of "Fold" a little languid. The chorus: "I hear you calling" is hardly original, but at least Numan doesn't rhyme it with 'falling'. The pace – and volume - picks up for "Halo" which starts with a wonderful array of electronic sounds. One criticism of this sort of music is the growled/whispered male vocals let the music down. You don't have this problem with a Numan album. It's ironic that Numan's vocals can simultaneously be cold and emotional. I don't know who has upset him, but the words tell the story: "There's no darker place, I think than you."

This is music that works best on headphones. That way it feels as if Numan is singing directly to you. There's something about the way the vocals are recorded on "In a Dark Place" that increases this intimacy. The pace is stately, but there's a good sense of quiet/loud dynamics to keep the attention. Numan seems obsessed with the dark, it's in the title here, but is also mentioned in the two previous songs. He's not afraid to tackle large subjects, while embracing the darkness. God is a recurrent figure in the lyrics of this album and it's clear to see that Numan is not impressed with our creator.

There's a moment of transcendence three minutes into "Before You Hate It". Numan sings: "I'll tell you something you don't know. Oo-oo. Oo-oo." It's a brief feeling of the sun breaking through the clouds in an otherwise eternal sky. If there's a criticism to be made of the songs on this album it's that they are all drawn from a limited palette. I'm not expecting Numan to break into a rendition of "Happy Talk" or anything. There are many muscular monoliths on this album, but they are all hewn from similar rock.

Belatedly Numan injects some variety during the title track. Ironically he does it by adopting the whispered vocals so beloved of the electronic genre. I'm glad that he doesn't perform the whole album (or even the whole song) like this, but it does make an effective change. There's even a sound in the background that sounds like a cross between a TARDIS materialising and a toilet flushing.

With a voice as distinctive as Numan's it's inevitable that things begin to sound a little repetitive. I'm happy to have Jagged in my collection, but I don't know if I'll be exploring too much more of his back catalogue. Well, maybe, I'll try to track down Sharpe and Numan's 1989 album Automatic, but that's a story for another time.