Madeleine & Salomon – aka vocalist and flutist Clotilde Rullaud (middle name: Madeleine) and pianist Alexandre Saada (middle name: Salomon) – released their first album, A Woman’s Journey, in 2016. That was an exploration of the ‘rebellious repertoire’ of female American singers, from Josephine Baker to Janis Joplin.

The duo’s second album, Eastern Spring – with its titular nod to the Arab Spring – revisits the militant pop of the Mediterranean basin of the 1960s and 70s. The arrangements are stripped back and sparse, the better to lay bare the themes of ‘Life-Death-Love’ – that ‘mystical trinity’ – largely explored here in French and English. There’s ‘Lili Twil’ by Les Frères Megri from Morocco; ‘De l’Orient à Orion’ by KR Nagati from Tunisia; ‘Ma Fatsh Leah’ by Al Massrieen from Egypt; ‘Layil’ by Shalom Hanoch from Israel; and the Iranian ‘pop hymn’ ‘Komakam Kon’, which is combined with US Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s epic 1956 work Howl.

There are some wonderful songs to discover and rediscover here, not least the set closer, ‘Do You Love Me?’, by the Lebanese Bendaly Family, which is given a yearningly minimalist treatment by the duo.