When Rachel Zeffira and Horrors' frontman Faris Badwan – who also collaborate as Cat's Eyes – get better at running their record label, RAF, they'll realise that December is a terrible time to release an album of understated orchestral pop. Zeffira's solo debut came out just before Christmas, but is more suited to the bleak chill of January: it's subdued, reflective and delicate as a light fall of snow. Her training as a soprano is so carefully suppressed that her crystal tone and perfect pronunciation seem more influenced by Broadcast's Trish Keenan than opera; mostly she sings in a whisper that, on her lucid cover of My Bloody Valentine's To Here Knows When, is barely discernible. It's in the music's precise layering of piano, violin and oboe that Zeffira's classical background is felt. Now and then she mistakes bland tastefulness for classy restraint; otherwise, subtlety is The Deserters' chief charm.