Communication often has multiple angles: at the beginning of Is affect real?, the third song on Frances Chang’s new album, she sings “Sometimes I want to wear / A head of light blonde hair / I don’t care if that’s unfair / Or makes me ordinary”, and she’s being vulnerable while also putting up a defence against being judged. It’s an interesting mix of defiance and insecurity, and Been Thinking Bout Confession sees Chang delivering this kind of lyrical material over idiosyncratic, contemplative instrumentals.

The piano melodies that run through I can feel the waves are sweet and playful, contrasting nicely with the song’s rickety, distorted drum machine loop. Strings add some harmonic layers, sometimes lush, sometimes uneasy, and Chang’s vocals are occasionally double-tracked in a way that’s endearingly clumsy. Marry is dominated by broken chords and reverb-laden snare hits, until a dualogue about an underaged sexual encounter gives the track an unexpected potency.

That night is an unexpected highlight, with rocking cluster chords and pedal notes accompanying the languid lyrics (“Sunday night, we get home / He’s indecisive about everything / I ask him if he wants to talk / Or watch a film, or just sleep / He can’t decide”). The arrangement swells in volume and becomes detached from tempo, a sustained violin is heard with tremolo and pitch-shifting applied, the coda is sparse and birds quietly chirp in the gaps between chords, the effect is highly evocative of the story Chang is telling.

The final track Honestly focuses on the effort involved in expressing oneself – the piano part is meandering, searching for a great sequence, certain sounds pop in and out as Chang sees if they fit, the song gets stuck in a repetitive rut then ends abruptly as if its creator has given up.