(Independent Release) Athens singer-songwriter LeeAnn Peppers follows up her highly personal 2017 debut, What Isn’t Said, with an even more intimate venture into the depths of loss and grief. For Asha, With Love, her latest eight-song album, revolves around the passing of a dear college friend from cancer nearly 10 years ago, and shirks overt melody in favor of what she refers to as “narrative poetry” to convey her lingering memories and emotions. 

As one might suspect, based on its subject matter, this is the kind of album that demands something of the listener, but Peppers’ elegies are deeply rewarding to those willing to put in the time, and they invite the kind of human connection lost in so much of contemporary music. “Mansfield, OH” and “The Fire of Love” stick out as especially gratifying, each offering an extended outro—the former with a really neat ambient harmonic section and the latter with a minute or so of recorded rainfall—that provides its own opportunity for personal reflection.