Maximilian Hecker

On his third full-length, young German troubadour Maximilian Hecker sheds nearly all of the down-tempo, Thievery Corporation filigree of his first two albums, aiming instead for a record held together by spare piano chords, gravity-free vocals, and keyboards that sound like Eno on an ice floe. Think Rufus Wainwright pried from his gluttonous Broadway bombast and forced to rely on free-floating emotion, a few loose piano bones and the occasional acoustic strum. Hecker’s voice has a weightless femininity, a less constipated falsetto than Thom Yorke — more like a pillowy exhale that never once touches a lower register. Though the arid balladry can make one hunger for an intrusion of riff or the anchoring ground of a bass line, Lady Sleep gorgeously passes through like a lingering shiver.