The debut album from onDeadWaves – Polly Scattergood and James Chapman / Maps – has been one of the major highlights of this year, a very special record that is definitely more than the sum of its parts – a major compliment since those ‘parts’ represent two very accomplished musicians in their own right, presiding over back catalogues full of towering emotional moments.

For Dusk Sessions #1, onDeadWaves offer up a new version of ‘California’, one of the few truly upbeat songs (albeit one about death) on the album. Here, everything is reduced to a whisper, giving the track an intimate edge that feels like little more than wind rustling through fallen leaves, or a quiet nighttime acoustic beach singalong for depressed Millennials.

The track is backed by an equally fragile cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’, whose ethereality makes the version of ‘California’ seem weighty in comparison. Here the pair give a curious optimistic edge to a song that is essentially about having no emotional or capacity for feeling at all.

Dusk Sessions #1 is available on iTunes.

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence