With their previous album Midnight Shelter, US vocalist Sachal Vasandani and French pianist Romain Collin – friends and NYC neighbours – joined forces to produce one of the most understated, intimate and critically acclaimed albums of 2021. Lightning couldn’t possibly strike twice, could it? Well, yes, actually. From Vasandani’s self-penned ‘No More Tears’, which touchingly charts the end of a relationship, to Collin’s gently lilting ‘How Could We Be’, the listener is welcomed once again into this lyrical, sotto voce, sirenic sound-world. With absolutely no overdubs or studio edits of any kind, it’s the interplay between the two musicians – the way in which the beautiful timbre of Collin’s Steinway piano envelops and coalesces with Vasandani’s unadorned melodic lines in Billie Eilish’s ‘I Love You’ or Paul Simon’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ – which enables the music-making to take flight. Other highlights include gorgeous takes on two of the greatest songs about heartache, ‘I Can't Make You Love Me’, a song originally made famous by the great Bonnie Raitt and Peter Gabriel’s ‘Washing Of The Water’. Plaudits here, too, for Jeremy Loucas who recorded, mixed and mastered the album at the Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NYC.