Keeley Forsyth’s remarkable run of initial albums continued in 2024 with her third full length overall, The Hollow. While it would be stretching a point to say that it’s an album from the immediate post pandemic, there’s a feeling of emerging not from insularity — her work remains compellingly her own — but from a close personal space to a vaster one. Perhaps the best contemporary comparison might be Lankum’s shocking upward step, 2023’s False Lankum, as Forsyth and her key collaborator Ross Downes on production blend her vivid vocal experimentations — now easily the equal of Scott Walker’s on his late albums — against music and textures caught between haunted pasts and dark presents. Skeletal, soft beats, murmuring melodic loops and floating tones and orchestrations entwine around lyrics both harrowing and forthright in description and demand, as on the transformed worksong “A Shift.” Colin Stetson’s guest role on “Turning” provides another highlight, his saxophone collage backing Forsyth’s rhythmic vocal bed and suddenly vivid detailing of a fraught body. In sum, a simply remarkable work from someone who is clearly one of the 2020s’ major talents.