Keyboardist Roger O’Donnell is best known as a member of The Cure; his synths were a key presence on the group’s landmark 1987 album Disintegration. The UK musician’s subsequent solo work has encompassed contemplative synthesizer excursions (2006’s The Truth in Me, 2009’s Songs From the Silver Box) and piano etudes (2010’s Piano Formations); he moved into chamber arrangements with 2015’s Love and Other Tragedies, with cellist Julia Kent. On 2 Ravens, he pushes even further in that sentimental direction. Joined by the cellist Alisa Liubarskaya and London’s Quartet Voluté, O’Donnell writes spare, searching songs that are as remarkable for their restraint as they are their depth of feeling. The album’s four instrumentals are gentle and contemplative; “December” evokes the stillness and graceful decay of a wintry rural landscape. Four songs featuring Jennifer Pague, of Vita and the Woolf, are even more gripping: The Los Angeles singer’s clear, hushed tone is the perfect fit for O’Donnell’s skeletal arrangements, and she has an intuitive grasp for unexpected melodic twists. If O’Donnell’s music tugs at the heartstrings, teasing us down melancholy byways, Pague’s soothing voice guides us back home.