The Spektral Quartet kept audiences on the edge of their seats in a vast repertoire from 2010 until last year, and their artistry will live on in a series of recordings, including three set for release this year. The first is devoted to Alex Temple’s Behind the Wallpaper, a song-cycle by a composer who terms her work ‘specifically genderqueer’. She has noted of the piece: ‘I tried to convey an outsider’s view not just of music, but of the experience of living in the world. I’ve written before about wanting to address trans issues in my work, and this set of songs is as explicit as I’ve gotten.’

Explicit yet subtle, given the intimate and largely tonal nature of the cycle’s 10 songs and one instrumental piece. Temple wrote her own texts, which explore various states of alienation and existential wonderment. The music is a potpourri of Romantic and pop styles ranging from nostalgic waltzes and whimsical or surreal narratives to dark, ambiguous musings. The songs are immediately appealing, with undercurrents of vulnerability adding suspense or pathos.

Each of the songs finds the string quartet providing a spectrum of atmospheres around which the vocalist is a measured storyteller. Julia Holter sings her lines with almost childlike innocence, bringing purity of pitch and crystalline declamation.

The Spektral musicians are kaleidoscopic in painting the multitude of hues and details in Temple’s score, which includes such sound effects as crickets, waves and an ominous nuclear-reactor hum. In the single, eerie episode without singer, ‘Meanwhile’, the quartet (accompanied by electronic static) play with hushed intensity.