The Swiss-Albanian vocalist Elina Duni, an artist with a rare sensitivity to the connecting points between pure vocal and instrumental sound, textual narratives in different languages, and the cinematic qualities in good lyrics, has followed up the Mediterranean and Broadway balladeering, and Albanian and French folk music of 2020's Lost Ships with an equally spirited and subtle collection using the same lineup and a similar songlist.

Duni's confidence in her group's growing assurance on the road is borne out by the ease with which they wrap themselves around a repertoire of traditional Albanian and Kosovan folksongs, a couple of Duni's and guitarist Rob Luft's originals, the standards ‘I'll Be Seeing You’ and ‘Send In The Clowns’, and the softly ecstatic sea-themed poem ‘Évasion’ by Belgian-Israeli poet Esther Granek. The Albanian-language traditional ‘Hape Derën’ - literally ‘Open The Door’ - expresses the sense of hopes being patiently unfurled but brought to urgent demands through Duni's intensifying vocal and the subtle interventions of Luft and flugelhornist Matthieu Michel, while the confiding, vaporous ‘I'll Be Seeing You’ takes on an oddly impassioned matter-of-factness.

The much-covered ‘Send In The Clowns’ is instrumentally stretched into a knowing, phlegmatic speculation around Duni's voice, and the title track is a rhapsody on the intensity of first experiences and their recollections in tranquillity. As always with Elina Duni, this is a thoughtful, beautifully articulated piece of jazzy poetry, even if the mood is predominantly introspective.