On her second album, Love, Heidi Berry found her perfect home – England’s 4AD label – and spread her wings accordingly. If her debut album, Below The Waves, sat fairly comfortably within the folk tradition, Love gives Berry’s songs greater space to move around; the production is light, air-filled, and her songs access a profundity beyond their tender years. There’s a cover of Bob Mould’s “Up In The Air” that replaces Hüsker Dü’s buzzsaw velocity with weightless drift; Berry’s sensitive to the power of Mould’s lyric, and frames it gorgeously within new environs. But Berry’s songs are the core of Love, and her writing deftly balances the elemental and the sensual, supported by a cast of players that includes members of The House Of Love, Levitation, The Rockingbirds, and even legendary free improvisor Lol Coxhill.

– Jon Dale