In every song on this riveting, elegiac album, a person is caught up in emotion because of events, or, in the case of “Arguing With Ghosts”, an absence of events. Peters realises, therefore, that her first task is to act the songs, and her second, to sing them. These are a series of one-act plays, but more compact and with more disciplined constructions.

This is a dark album, to put it mildly, with songs that manage, with deft use of language, to cram a whole epic into three minutes. It’s astonishingly good writing – accessible without pandering. These are American stories from a writer who views the world with a marked abundance of compassion.

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