Melancholia sweeps through Novo Amor’s intimate indie folk almost as if it’s another instrument. That’s not to say that every song is sad—but rather reflective. It was a breakup, after all, that inspired singer-songwriter-producer Ali John Meredith-Lacey (born in 1991 in Wales) to go by the alias Novo Amor, meaning “new love” in Portuguese. Along with frequent collaborations with English multi-instrumentalist Ed Tullett (a.k.a. Lowswimmer)—including the pair’s haunting 2017 acoustic album Heiress—Meredith-Lacey is a powerful presence on his own, harnessing beauty and pain with lush instrumentation and a falsetto that soothes like a lullaby. Even when he steps aside from the mic, as on his 2022 ambient album, Antarctican Dream Machine, he designs sound with a stunning sense of place and poignancy.