Recognised as a purveyor of dreamier pop with folky leanings, this new album is a departure; a unique marriage of traditional stylings and very modern melodies; a breath-taking soundtrack which underpins her gorgeous vocal. Filled with personal tales of offspring and grandparents, the lovelorn and the lost, it’s the essence of re-imagined folk music, from the traditional intro and outro that act as bookends.

Italian singer songwriter Marta Del Grandi returns with ‘Selva’, her most intricate and shimmering effort yet, a refined devotional suite of astute pop that flows effortlessly, uniting emotional complexity, divine organic arrangements with a sci-fi finish. Beams of choral light radiate and permeate each track, with layered vocal drones creating a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures, as almost to guide us hand in hand across Marta Del Grandi’s enchanted universe. The ambition is blinding and the outcome is here to prove it: 12 songs of sprawling ethereal pop that is vivid, immense and fully illuminated.

Clear Pond Road continues the juxtaposition of dark and light –dark sunshine, as Hersh puts it– that characterizes Hersh’s legendary work with Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave but goes even further inward as it explores the intimacy and complexity that sits alongside Hersh’s fierce independence