Barzin Hosseini is working through some stuff. Need proof? Check this lyric: “Lovers are strangers/ and we are too/ Look what love has/ turned us into.” Believe it or not, that’s the upbeat number on the album.

This kind of emotional heaviness would be too much to handle if the music to accompany it wasn’t so delicately beautiful. With understated strings, underplayed percussion and whispered vocals, Notes to an Absent Lover plays like Nick Drake meets Hope Sandoval (if, of course, that torrid meeting resulted in desperate heartbreak).

Tender and evocative, it’s also perfect moping-around music. It’s so perfect, in fact, that I can’t recommend this album to someone who’s having relationship troubles. It might just send them over the edge.