From its opening track, in which vocalist Imogen Ryall and sax player Julian Nicholas soar in unison over Mark Edwards' tintinnabulating piano accompaniment – with subtle strokes of a temple bell adding to the hieratic effect – One January Morning immediately installs itself in your heart for its melodic beauty and emotional sincerity. One of five songs to feature lyrics by Ryall, the trio's arrangement of Carla Bley's ‘Lawns’, is one of the most exquisite things I've heard this year. Wayne Shorter's 1975 album Native Dancer has been an important touchstone for all three members of the trio, and Ryall's new lyrics to ‘Ana Maria’ seem entirely apposite to the mood of the original. In addition to an impressive vocalese on Brad Mehldau's ‘When It Rains’, the trio dips into the Great American Songbook with a hard-swinging ‘If I Should Lose You’, while the Nicholas-penned title-track provides yet another feast for the senses. Bathed in a luxuriant reverb, the dream-like (or should that be nightmarish?) treatment of ‘In A Sentimental Mood’ has Loose Tubes songbook written all over it, with Edwards' rhapsodic solo somehow adding to the disconcerting mood. Ryall once again pens a germane, affecting lyric for Mehldau's ‘Ode’, enveloped in the most sympathetic way by the two instrumentalists.