Given the company that Joan Wasser has kept over the years, it’s no surprise that her first album is heavy on emotive torch songs and introspective ballads. She’s toured with diva crooners Rufus Wainwright and Antony, and she was close to the late troubadours Jeff Buckley (an ex) and Elliott Smith (the subject of the closing track, “We Don’t Own It”). What’s unexpected, though, is the sheer poise of Wasser’s direct yet delicate compositions. She’s a trained violinist, but her primary instrument is her throaty quaver of a voice. From the opening title track, on which she works up the nerve to utter the name of a distant lover, to the Smith elegy, which quietly separates the private man from his public myth, this is a most unlikely debut: a model of maturity and understatement.

Download: “We Don’t Own It,” “Eternal Flame,” “Christobel”