WHEN you call yourself Emmy The Great, you better be good, and Emma Lee-Moss is very, very good.

2011's This is Christmas coupling with Ash's Tim Wheeler was probably the best Christmas album since Phil Spector's Sixties' Motown classic, and she has been a clever, singular and original voice in the crowded panoply of singer-songwriters since 2009's First Love.

Made with myriad musical friends, Second Love is in fact her third solo record, and although it echoes her debut in more than its title, her storytelling, her emotional expression, her need to question our relationships with each other, technology and where we live, have all ripened.

She already had a finely tuned radar to spot a melody and to locate the sweetspot for making the heart leap, while her moves from London to Los Angeles and now New York have asked her to work out her place in the world. "We're going to need music and we're going to need love," she decided. Second Love, in fact.