Julianna Barwick returns with the successor to 2011’s charming The Magic Place with her new album titled Nepenthe, out now on Dead Oceans. Similar to her previous record, the American singer once again uses delay-pedals to build heaven-scraping towers of chorused plainsong out of her earnestly, achingly pretty soprano, placing them in what John Foxx – whose 90s’ ambient recordings the better material sometimes recalls – called “cathedral oceans” of reverb.

It’s hard not to be moved by the poignant pastoral drift of ‘Look Into Your Own Mind’ or the magnificent spiritual drama of ‘One Half’, but over the course of 10 tracks the unwaveringly “soft” sound can wear a little thin. What gave The Magic Place its power was its haunted, isolationist quality, and the sense that you were listening to songs of survival and sufferance as much as celebration; by contrast this new LP Nepenthe sounds like its soaring, IMAX-scale climaxes are sometimes unearned. Nonetheless, Barwick’s voice is an undeniably beautiful instrument, and Somers’ delicately cast chamber arrangements are nothing if not soothing.

Listen with the lights off!