Robert Coyne & Jaki Liebezeit – I Still Have This Dream

The third collaboration between alt-folk doyen Coyne and the revered Can percussionist is deliberately gentle and low key, each acoustic trail leafy, every drumbeat emphasising the space such stark metronomy bequeaths.

It’s not an especially immediate listen – and it certainly isn’t incendiary – but that’s very much the point, Coyne’s vocal delivery (at times eerily reminiscent of Crowded House’s Neil Finn) a warm filter through which his frequently playful lyrics ('I am the Cockney mystic, I take the biscuit, and I’m healing your cat tonight') arrive.

Ball of Light skips across the oohs of its backing vocal, Tough to Love leans towards melancholia without ever coming close to wallowing, while the duet representing the title track glides with an intimate, introspective tenderness. Liebezeit’s percussion (as always) represents the monochromatic backdrop across which colour is draped, and although I Still Have This Dream won’t blow socks off, its subtle mischief speaks of a vernal confidence.