While there are a number of impressive, adroitly reworked cover versions on this fabulous album from vocalist Sarah Jane Morris and guitarist Antonio Forcione – the beautifully layered guitar lines of ‘Superstition’ which also elicits one of Morris's signature, blood-curdling screams, a blistering ‘Compared to What’ and an almost oceanic ‘Blowing in the Wind’ – it's the duo's self-penned songs (with some of the lyrics written by Sarah Jane's long-standing collaborator and Band of Holy Joy founder, Johny Brown) that represent the album's emotional centre of gravity.

On impeccably crafted songs such as the heartbreaking survivor's tale ‘The Sea’, the thoughtful, inward-looking ‘I Bare My Soul’ and the sotto voce ‘Moving Forward My Friend’, Morris and Forcione demonstrate a capacity to write music that unfailingly delivers a powerful emotional jolt. Limning any number of deep-seated feelings, the duo's rapport enables them to lift the notes and words off the page and transport the listener right into the centre of their stories.