Singer April May Webb and trumpeter Randall Haywood are A and R, with an origin story portentously recalled in ‘Thus the Beginning…’, as the pair meet across a crowded jam session at Moore's Lounge jazz club, Jersey City, in February 2013. They've since had success across the Hudson, from Birdland to the Apollo, explained by this third album's mix of clubland crowd-pleasers with more earnest ambition. Webb's nimbly rhythmic vocalese and vocal range, like the flugelhorn and trumpet with which Haywood cushions her and subtly crests till, on the title track's reprise, they wholly blend, is, like the straightahead rhythm section, rooted in jazz verities. But SOAR are also steeped in early 1970s soul's jazz-imbued culture, sinking deep into the romantic sentiment of Roberta Flack's ‘Killing Me Softly’, before drifting into something dreamier, Webb's muscular scat on its later reprise achieving abstract lift-off. An initially faithful ‘Jolene’ similarly floats into wordless realms, Haywood dancing agilely over glassy piano ripples. Webb's ‘They Keep Saying No’ could confront career or racial barriers. Her ‘The Skin I'm In’ leaves no doubt, this companion to ‘(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue’ declaring: “Every day, I am black/This fac' dictates how I am to act”, to Haywood's mournful serenade. Webb's traditional jazz virtues and compositional ambition recall Cécile McLorin Salvant, and though SOAR don't reach those heights, they keep one foot firmly out of the supper club, and in contemporary feeling.