One of the most stunningly beautiful releases of 2021 was this album by Arooj Aftab, a singer of Pakistani descent who works from a foundation of Sufi devotional music but is taking it in new directions. Her songs unspool with quiet but intense logic, accompanied by small complements of acoustic instruments (guitar, harp, strings, flugelhorn, etc.), and all defy any attempt at characterization; the melodies are complex but accessible, with a minimum of melisma, and the one — rather startling — exception to their stylistic similarity is a brief excursion into acoustic reggae. This is an astounding and completely entrancing album.