Hunter, Hunter is clearly an album written by someone with a deep respect for language. Halifax-based singer-songwriter Amelia Curran’s tracks sneak beneath your skin like fog and linger under the surface of your daily rituals like the smell of smoke, or old coffee.

Lyricism is undoubtedly the greatest strength of her signature style: it isn’t so much the words she uses as it is how her voice turns lines like, “I’m a lover’s enemy and I can’t be counted on,” into a potent form of oral poetry. The album consists of a dozen songs playing on the theme of seeking and longing, each with a slightly different focus and yet never once waning in intensity. There is a strong sense of alluding to the hidden emotional reality of the moment, a degree of ambivalence as to what exactly the intensity of the song is directed towards.

Often this kind of ambiguity can lead to an unsatisfying album where the music never reaches fully into that somber mood. But here the emotional confusion becomes a strength as Amelia Curran sings from this place of sultry, melancholy and brooding rawness and celebrates it without trivializing the pain of being sad. And, bets of all, it’s deeply intelligent without being pretentious or obscure.

Like a collection of short stories, each piece stands strong on its own while coming from a different narrative place. “The Mistress” is a strong, obsessive, guilt-ridden monologue, “Bye Bye Montreal” comes off as a melancholy goodbye to a particular place in time, while “The Dozens” is a tongue-in-cheek anthem of the femme fatale. Ultimately, this is an album that you don’t so much listen to it as “read” through. It is intimate, real and utterly distinctive.

* out of **