When you buy a Kranky release, you can be reasonably assured of three things:

1. It will be quiet.
2. It will feature guitars, even if they don't sound like guitars.
3. It will sound at psychedelic.

Jessica Bailiff's third album for Kranky is all of these things, but otherwise something of a tough nut to crack. Her voice is wispy but not particularly ethereal. She likes to use acoustic guitar and piano. At times she plays what sounds like a steel-stringed violin (or maybe bowed guitar), which adds hard, ringing tones to the songs where it's employed. For the most part, her songs avoid percussion. At least one song ("Time Is An Echo") is as pretty as anything I've heard recently.

Overall, this album, like her previous ones, is beautiful but distanced. Bailiff doesn't want you to figure out too much. With each album, she improves her control of her music, and the distance means that the music takes its time to open itself up. That makes for a more interesting and involving album, but it's an open question whether you'll have the patience to tease apart the enigma to get to the beauty inside.