Young musicians coming out of the cosseted world of jazz academia might feel the need to let their hair down at some point. That time might have come for the quartet named Blue-Eyed Hawk and their intelligent singer-songwriter debut Under the Moon on Edition Records. The quartet features the Irish vocalist Lauren Kinsella, one of the brightest creative sparks to come out of the contemporary jazz vocal field in a long while and a few of the leading instrumentalists from London's Chaos Collective. Using a colourful, idiomatically diverse vocabulary that merges aspects of song from folk-pop through to jazz and the avant garde, Kinsella takes her cues from singers such as Joni Mitchell and Christine Tobin through to Northern European innovators Björk and Sidsel Endresen, especially from the latter's very percussive, onomatopoeic soundworld. Another emerging talent, the trumpeter Laura Jurd explores another side to her musical personality. Writing contributions are shared between the band, and among them are Jurd's new wave-y anthem ‘Living in the Fast Lane’, not exactly Pussy Riot but effective all the same with Alex Roth's T-Rex-ish swagger and Sonic Youth-type diaphanous guitar providing the raunch factor. There are just as many tender, ambient folkish moments though, including Roth's ‘Aurora 5am’ (it would be interesting to hear what Robert Wyatt might do with this song), and the Seamus Heaney inspired ‘Valediction’ draws from more choral and pastoral music. Kinsella is Björk-like as she sings a translation of a W.B. Yeats poem ‘O Do Not Love too Long’, while her ‘Spiderton’ is an indie rock hit waiting to happen.