While every song covered on vocalist, songwriter and bandleader Dara Tucker's Dreams of Waking: Music For a Better World is a bona fide classic that has long since been imprinted on our musical consciousness – from the beautiful recasting of James Taylor's ‘Secret O’ Life’ to the stripped back piano-vocal arrangement of Randy Newman's ‘I Think It's Gonna Rain Today’ – the brilliance and subtlety of the arrangements, together with Tucker's remarkable storytelling gift, combine to make each one sound bracingly fresh.

A vocalist whose every note is absolutely centred, Tucker unfailingly gets right to the heart of the song, Featured in Act II of the 1960 Broadway musical Do Re Mi, ‘Make Someone Happy’ has been covered by the world and his wife, and yet the stunning piano-vocal take featured here is like hearing the song anew, such is the way Tucker makes it her own, She performs similar feats with Stevie Wonder's ‘You Haven't Done Nothin’ and the classic Donny Hathaway/Edward Howard ballad, ‘Someday We'll All Be Free, while the self-penned ‘Do We Sleep?’ adroitly questions whether we prefer to turn our backs on societal injustices, With the magnificent Cyrus Chestnut and Sullivan Fortner sharing piano and Rhodes duties, plus the warm, sonorous recording courtesy of Grammy-winning engineer Mike Marciano, any time spent in the company of this exceptional album is time well spent.