From shining fresh light on beloved standards via new lyrics penned for Ornette Coleman's ‘Lonely Woman’, to wry ruminations on mortality via a setting of Billy Collins’ ‘The Afterlife’, which allows the deceased to inhabit the exact world they imagined ("Some have already joined the celestial choir and are singing as if they have been doing this forever"); on SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree Kurt Elling continues to ask the questions with an all-embracing compassion and poignancy.

As heard on the Elling/Don Was/Phil Galdston collab, ‘Freeman Square’, the grooves and arrangements supplied by Charlie Hunter, and Butcher Brown's Corey Fonville and DJ Harrison appear deeper, more seasoned, more lived in. Excerpted from Joni Mitchell’s classic 1976 album, Hejira, the quartet’s exploration of imaginative possibilities is heard in a marble-smooth reworking of ‘Black Crow’, which is also graced by the wonderful playing of flautist, Elena Pinderhughes. It's typical of Elling that his first dip into the repertoire of the late, great Bob Dorough eschews the more obvious songs such as ‘Devil May Care’ or ‘I'm Hip’ in favour of the little-covered ‘Naughty Number Nine’ (from Schoolhouse Rock!).

Whether lovingly caressing the lyrics of Ron Sexsmith's ‘Right About Now’ or appending dexterous wordplay onto Nate Smith’s ‘Bounce’ (a track which served as an instrumental interlude on the Elling/Hunter EP Guilty Pleasures released earlier this year, which here becomes ‘Bounce It’), Elling's visceral storytelling continues to dazzle.