Lockdown has impacted musicians so many ways, but for Frater-Taylor, while acknowledging the tragedy at the heart of the pandemic, she's relished the last year for allowing her to complete her second album.

Bloom is differently edged from her debut, On My Mind, which by her own description was “folky” in texture. The singer-song writer mode remains, but now the melodies are celebratorily poppy as on the opening ‘I Think About You’. The vocal range is richer too, a soulish feel having joined with those Joni style higher registers. Influenced by the likes of Becca Stevens, Frater-Taylor's lyrics are deeper, intimating darkness yet with accessible melodies, as suggested on ‘Not Broken’. But there's also a guileless charm, as with the protagonist of ‘Just My Type’, with its marginal echo of Gwyneth Herbert.

Herbert famously turned her back on the Universal label so she could keep her artistic independence, and Frater-Taylor has something of that spirit. A self-avowed perfectionist, perhaps the niggardly would describe Bloom as over-produced, over-detailed with its densely layered harmonies. But the closing ‘Wavy’ has a rawer, ‘live’ edge which is all the stronger for its sonic contrast to the rest of the album. Oh, nearly forgot. Frater-Taylor plays guitar like an angel and scats along to long Loueke-like lines that tumble and build as light yet large as summer cloud. And the twinning of vox and guitar lines is no gimmick. The scat/picked break on ‘Crazy’ blossoms from the melody, and even more impressively on the stand-out ‘Better Days’. Eat your heart out, Rob Luft!