JULIANNA BARWICK - Will

Julianna Barwick, one of the most open-minded chanteuses of recent years, by now a master of diffracted vocals that never tip over into showiness and instead remain in a delicately celestial realm, continues down this path with her third album, "Will". The affair is even more personal than in the past, starting with the handful of guests present (just cellist Maarten Vos and Canadian electronic artist Thomas "Mas Ysa" Arsenault).

Several tracks, however, sound like demos left to their own fate for reasons never quite specified, such as the attempted chillout remix of an opera aria on "St. Apolonia", the vocal reverbs of "Wist", and the pianistic elegy of "Beached".

The electronics, perhaps the first true heresy of her career, don't assert themselves as something new or as a turning point, but rather as makeshift scaffolding to prop up shapeless geometries on "Nebula" (just a measly loop), "See, Know" (the opposite: an intrusive techno wail) and "Same" (pseudo-symphonic keyboards).

If anything, Barwick is convincing when she returns to the fold of her familiar style (obviously not exactly an act of courage): the cloud of nun-like chants on "Big Hollow", driven along by piano counterpoint, is without doubt the center-of-gravity track. Above all, "Someway" is one of her finest minimalist sonatas built from choral flutters and Lisa Gerrard-esque psalmodic intonations.

Three years on from the excellent "Nepenthe" (2013), this is an album of leftover ideas, discarded from its predecessors and dressed up haphazardly, more a mismatched catalogue of rarities – recorded between one tour and the next – than a fully realized work. Barwick's grammar is an extremely delicate porcelain vase: rigid and glittering. Once shaken, it falls apart. It was preceded by an EP improvised at Dogfish Head in Milton, "Rosabi" (2014).

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12/05/2016