" data-original-title="" title="">Veronica Swift is that artist and, most declaratively, This Bitter Earth is that album.

Since there is not a standard of any bearing that Swift doesn't defy and stamp as her very own, it comes as no surprise that she can take "Trust In Me" from Disney's The Jungle Book, the poppy effluence and innocence of the Crystal's '62 single "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" and Lionel Bart's torcher "As Long As He Needs Me" and braid them into a unsettling vision of the emotional upheaval too many women in too many abusive relationships experience on a daily—no, hourly—basis.

Swift is twenty-seven and at the top of her game; This Bitter Earth spotlights all of her precocious, vanguard strengths and daring interpretative acknowledgement of the music past, present and future. Her skilfully active arrangements, ("He Hit Me" is going to kick your ass plain and simple) and her deep intuition of the unbridled energy of music as one pure whole, not a filing cabinet of categories, weave a compelling libretto of dark, larger truths we try to ignore but dare not. Can not.

Beating at the core of this early 2021-best-of is pianist