The American singer’s Cadogan Hall gig was one of the highlights of last year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, not least because she previewed material from this recording, which looks as if it could well be one of her best to date. Previous releases such as Dreams And Daggers and The Window were excellent instalments of Salvant’s astute examination of both human nature and numerous traditions of song in and beyond the ambit of jazz, but Ghost Song ups the ante in terms of personal emotional investment and musical ingenuity.

The primary undercurrent is a sense of haunting, of restlessness and torment. It is all there in Salvant’s finely shaded voice down to every careful accent and emphasis on revelatory lyrics, which are potently consolidated by the advanced subtleties of an ensemble in which master guitarist Marvin Sewell is both a suitably corporeal and spectral presence, drawing on his consummate bluesiness with no concession to cliché. Folk and art are one. In between the title track, in which Salvant delivers a brilliant take on the barriers we place on happiness in the form of pride and illusory superiority, and a rendition of ‘Wuthering Heights’ that both releases the dizzying madness of the Bronté-Bush axis and keeps a lid on it, there is a bundle of other fine pieces that are unsettling and illuminating in equal measure.

The result is music of sensitivity and intelligence, which underlines Salvant’s growth as an artist of stature whose stylistic choices are as daring as they are mature.