Though a graduate of Dublin's Newpark Music Centre in jazz performance, Ruba Shamshoum's delightful debut CD doesn't fall neatly into any particular category. What does these days? The Palestinian-born, Dublin-based singer infuses elements of jazz with her Middle Eastern roots on these nine originals, ably backed by some of the country's finest musicians, who straddle the fields of contemporary jazz, folk and improvised music. A little of all these strands percolate through the compositions. Shamshoum delivers most of the songs in Arabic, a language whose innate musicality seems tailor-made for the poetic sensibility of these songs of love, kinship and soul-searching. No Arabic vocal diva, Shamshoum stylishly sidesteps stereotypes and instead maps out a highly contemporary and personal course.

Shamshoum's voice is a thing of beauty, the seduction immediate from the first notes of "Randomness of Beauty Spots." Not just a pretty voice, much of her vocal appeal lies in the subtle shifts of weight in her phrasing and the flow of sounds that imbue the songs with their emotional ambiance. Her accompanists are significant partners in the process.