In a New York Times profile written around the release of her most recent album, Ghost Song, jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant describes the record as a project that should match the feeling of rifling through a notebook, of reading someone else’s diary or letters. When I first heard the record, I found this feeling unsettling. I didn’t care for the sequencing. The opening cover of Kate Bush’s “Withering Heights” was grand and evocative, but “Optimistic Voices” (from The Wizard of Oz) irritated, spoiling the beauty of Gregory Porter’s “No Love Dying.” I didn’t get it.

The New York Times profile, written by the excellent Giovanni Russonello, helped. For me, Ghost Song makes sense as an artistic notebook. It coheres as a whole, even if it doesn’t flow from song to song. It has real texture, too, real materiality, and the more time I spend with it the more I appreciate that it doesn’t go down smoothly. The children’s choir at the end of the title track bothers, but I like it alongside the exasperation of “Obligation.” “Wuthering Heights” was recorded in a church. The acoustics on the track are great, but its open acoustics sound out of place alongside the intimacy of much of the rest of the record. So? The intimacy and the openness both sound great. They both sound like Cécile McLorin Salvant.

Somehow, somehow, somehow, I have made it this far without talking about the voice that drives this record. McLorin Salvant is a tremendous singer. She can belt, she can wail, she can scold, she tell a thrilling story, she can play a character, she can do whatever she wants. Her voice is a versatile instrument, but she never sounds like anyone other than herself. No, Ghost Song doesn’t flow perfectly. Cécile McLorin Salvant pulls it all together, though. It’s her notebook, after all.