The Vancouver-born vocalist, pianist and songwriter Laila Biali serves up an impressive ACT debut with a combination of mellifluous vocals, dynamic pianism and hook-laden songwriting. The 12-song collection fuses jazz, pop, blues and soul influences, with Biali’s strong originals placed very much to the fore. They include the hard-driving, hand-clapping album opener ‘Got To Love’, the latinified and slightly Snarky-esque ‘We Go’ (great work here from Snarky Puppy members Mike ‘Maz’ Maher on trumpet and Larnell Lewis on drums), the catchy ‘Queen of Hearts’ featuring seraphic backing harmonies supplied by Lisa Fischer, Jo Lawry and Carlos Ricketts, plus the captivating ‘Serenbe’ whose rhythmic fluidity places it in the same aesthetic orbit as Esperanza Spalding and Gretchen Parlato. The album’s trio of covers – the beautiful reharmonisations of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ and David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, plus a ruminative take on Randy Newman’s ‘I Think It’s Going To Rain Today’ – illustrate the inventiveness of Biali’s harmonic thinking.