Snowblink’s newest collection of songs, Returning Current, is an unflinching study of human relationships – to self, to other, and to Other, and to the threat of actuality of losing those unrepeatable prizes.

The Toronto/Los Angeles duo of Daniela Gesundheit and Dan Goldman began the recording process with a text based ‘mood board’ developed by Gesundheit to portray the sensations she wished to evoke in the production of the album. What results is “mastery at its liquidiest” claimed Leslie Feist in a personal letter to the band. A collection of songs that find the speaker reporting in the James Blake-esque ballad “Second Sight,” that “the sky was kneeling on my back to pray,” or elucidating the slipperiness of desire, as in the album’s title track “Returning Current.” These are private songs, domestic songs, songs to be absorbed over time.

Joining Snowblink in studio for the creation of Returning Current was co-producer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas) and a cast of acclaimed musicians including Leslie Feist, Owen Pallett, Barbara Gruska (Fiona Apple, Jenny Lewis, Ray LaMontagne), Johnny Spence (Tegan and Sara), Thom Gill, Ariel Engle (AroarA), Steven Foster (Doldrums), Felicity Williams (Bahamas), Philipe Melanson (Rufus Wainwright), Mika Posen (Timber Timbre), and many others.

Drawing from her background in old-school Jewish Cantorial repertoire, and her training in classical South Indian vocal music, Gesundheit’s voice moves deftly and fluently, but with a deceptively tender presentation. She shifts with surgical precision between unaffected soprano tones and unapologetic animalistic expressions with the seriousness and laser vocal clarity one might expect to find in the haunted voices of Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares. Looking to the emotional intelligence of heavyweights like Nina Simone, PJ Harvey, or Violeta Parra, or poets Anne Carson and Fanny Howe, while adhering to the optimistic and playful presentation of ’80s French pop duo Elie & Jacno, Snowblink manages a courageous strangeness, otherness, an optimal mismatch.