The third album from Thomas White under his Fiction Aisle moniker is a match for its delicious, under-heard predecessors. White remains best known for his output with The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes but the prolific Fiction Aisle (three albums since 2016) deserve to gain wider purchase. This time round the mood is more tentatively upbeat than previously, and White’s Pink Floyd-ish tendencies are on the back burner, but, at its core, cosmic easy listening is still the game.

The Fiction Aisle aspire to John Barry’s cinematic orchestrated scope, but tinted with hints of Morrissey’s vocal tics, and a broader electronic palette scoping about underneath. “Memory” even has a touch of late Nineties/early Millennial chill-out about it. However, it’s White’s characterful lyrical pith that sets The Fiction Aisle apart, giving his catchy songwriting extra reach and heft.

The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory

Previous outings have broached depression in an occasionally desperate or hedonistic manner but “Ten Years” hints at a newfound peace, or at least looking the issue in the eye (“It’s up to me to find any positivity – do I have the strength?”), while indie-ish opener “Gone Today”, despite its summery vibes, may be about existing in the moment rather than letting the past and future nag at the mind.

Another stand-out track is “Sweetness & Light”, a very straightforward, unembarrassed modern love song that’s also contagious. As the album goes on, White relaxes into it, spreading out, letting the sonic stylings grow ever more blissed, notably on the multi-tracked vocals of “Black River”, which bring to mind sunshine in 1970s LA, and the lusciousness of “Some Things Never Die”, until he eventually ends up drifting off on the final ten-minute “Will I Get Where I’m Going Before I’m Ready?”, with its extended instrumental passages heading into balminess.

Jupiter, Florida is as sunny as its title suggests, but cut through with a realist’s lyrical perspective, albeit a realist with a tendency to dream. Once again, The Fiction Aisle prove to be mining original, thoughtful and often lovely territory with a class that’s a cut above the usual.

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Overleaf: watch the video for "Gone Today" by The Fiction Aisle

The vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant first came to the attention of the jazz scene when she won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz competition in 2010. In 2013, her Mack Avenue Records debut WomanChild garnered a Grammy nomination. Two years later, she picked up her first Grammy Award when her follow-up release For One To Love won Best Jazz Vocal Album.

At two minutes and 39 seconds, Music For People in Trouble’s “Good Luck Bad Luck” executes an abrupt shift. An examination of whether a liaison would end up as “an empty cup” suddenly stops and the sound of a smoky jazz combo takes over with a melody bearing no relation to what preceded it. The composition unexpectedly passes into entirely different territory after Norway's Susanne Sundfør had been singing to her piano accompaniment, .

“Good Luck Bad Luck” was, in part, inspired by Elizabeth Strout’s short story The Piano Player and the music forming the surprising coda conceptualises what might have been heard in the bar in which the story’s protagonist plays the piano.

Similarly, the album’s “The Sound of War” comes in two parts: the first a sparse disquisition in which Sundfør finger-picks an acoustic guitar; the second a lengthy marriage of shape-shifting electronica and a wordless vocal with a sepulchral melody signifying the sound of war itself.

Music For People in Trouble is a collection of songs but goes further by soundtracking the content of the songs themselves. Sundfør’s fifth album is a twin-track experience asking the listener to pay attention to the mood and substance of each song. On one hand, it is about her startling, malleable voice, the gorgeous melodies and the words sung. On the other, it is about what frames these songs: a manifestation of the experiences which have helped create them.

What's drawn from is a period of travel throughout the globe’s edgiest regions. As well as this commentary on the state of the world. personal relations are pivotal too. The profoundly haunting album closer “Mountaineers” examines environmental disaster while the subject matter of “No One Believes in Love Anymore” is explicit.

Though certainly a work of art, Music For People in Trouble is wonderfully approachable. At its heart, the album is about beautiful, heart-rending melodies. The Gram Parsons-influenced ballad “Undercover” is pop at its most eloquent.

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Two More Essential Albums from 2017

Foxygen - Hang

Sumie - Lost in Light

Gigs of the Year

Žen, Kultuuriklubi Kelm, Tallinn, 1 April; Susanne Sundfør, Norwegian Wood festival, Oslo, 15 June; Mercury Rev & The Royal Northern Sinfonia, Barbican, 14 July; Karpov Not Kasparov, Kablys, Vilnius, 8 September

Track of the Year

Mammút – “Breathe Into Me”

Overleaf: watch Susanne Sundfør perform “Undercover”