There might well be lively debate on where this album belongs on the genre exchequer. To all intents and purposes this is pop in the broadest sense of the term, above all as a vehicle for melody. Theme, rather than variation and improvisation, is the order of the day. Indeed, a casual scroll through the 17 tracks – whose average three-minute duration is far removed from the anatomy of most contemporary jazz recordings justifies categorisation in mainstream, if not indie, rock. Yet on repeated listening Reclamation emerges as an artful and organic channelling of a whole range of musical vocabularies, one of which is jazz, into a basic verse-chorus format. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Darwish, whose credits as a bassist are not to be scoffed at – Moses Boyd, Zara McFarlane and Sting, among others – has a gift for a strong hook but he enhances it with some very wily arrangements that explore harmony and texture beyond what the bulk of those intent on scoring radio-play will attempt. The result is music that is closely informed by the improviser’s aesthetic, sometimes by way of a bass or sax solo that raises the tension at just the right moment, sometimes by uncommon chord sequences that suit the ashen shades of Darwish’s voice. There is a slight echo of Radiohead’s melancholia in places, but for the most part Darwish actually picks up where Ben Watt (of Everything But The Girl) left off on his 1983 classic Marine Drive, insofar as his compositions have a quality of innocence and experience, if not world weariness, that feels convincingly lived in.