Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Williams is remarkable on a number of levels: her voice, the endless hooks woven into her sophisticated writing, her gentle but unflinching human observation. But one of the most notable things about her is how her albums seem to keep on getting better with time. This album is her twelfth in 15 years, and its depths and emotional impact are just staggering. Conceived through a commission to pay tribute to Sylvia Plath on the 50th anniversary of The Bell Jar, it certainly does justice to Plath and succeeds in Williams’s aim of rescuing her from the cliché of the “sexy, depressing writer poster girl.” But it’s way more besides: each song works as a perfect musical and poetic statement in its own right — a meditation on life, love, sanity and strength — as well as adding together to make an emotional demolition ball of an album.

– Joe Muggs