Label: Rattle Records, 2025

Personnel - Darren Pickering: piano, synth, modular; Heather Webb: guitar; Pete Fleming: bass; Jono Blackie: drums.

New Zealander keyboardist Darren Pickering leads his Small Worlds quartet in a third volume of music comprising nine originals. There’s cohesive ensemble work in Three, but the factor ‘surprise’ is often missing, even if the quartet tends to color tender moments with a declarative lyricism.

“Green Blinking Light” helps setting the tone for the album with heartening gestures. A smooth, slightly intriguing sequence of a four-note piano riff materializes with rhythmic accentuations popping up in unexpected places. “What If” is an emotionally charged ballad etched with low-key modular synth warps, a softly brushed backbeat, reverb-drenched guitar, and a clear piano narrative. This unequivocally jazzy harmonic movements are dropped in “Soft Life”, where a metronomic pulse, ambient-electronic spatiality, and dreamlike fantasy are circumscribed by a regular, spasmodic beat.

Jono Blackie’s crisp, time-keeping drumming gives a contemporary feel to the E.S.T.-like “Hjartdal”, where a delicate melody and simmering spontaneous chords put in a claim for resolution. In the 4/4 ballad “Folly”, we feel warmth at play as the music acquires a fusion vibe through Heather Webb’s hot-wired guitar. Pickering then takes center stage, operating atop Pete Fleming’s groovy bass slides and Blackie’s pragmatic drum fluxes.

The group struggles with some ideas, and the material occasionally falls into predictable vibes and spaces. “Randall” is one of those numbers in need of nuance, despite an ultimate riff-driven passage rockified by the guitarist. Also, the swinging “Taylor Time” doesn’t provide special moments, but I still enjoyed the trade bars between the drummer an the rest of the band.

Alternating between soulful and aloof, Three would have benefited with more intense passion and perhaps fewer polished surfaces.