You’d be forgiven for thinking that there was a gestation lab in the basement of every major label where dusky, honey-voiced singer-songwriters are cloned from a swab taken from Katie Melua around 2003. Though Blackpool’s Rae Morris claims to have spent only one day in drama school, studied music in Preston rather than the Brit school and comes endorsed by the beiger end of indie rock – Noah & the Whale, Bombay Bicycle Club, Lucy Rose – she seems fresh from the mould.

Taking her seat at an electric piano and striking stark chords, heavy with the anguish and ruin that 21 years in the shadow of the Pleasure Beach can impose, Morris scientifically fuses the varnished angst of Laura Marling and Lorde. “Long live this pain,” she wails on opener Grow, with inflections of Florence Welch, Cat Power, Eliza Doolittle and Marissa Nadler, among many others. The odd squeak, hiccup or yodel that suggest she’s heard of Regina Spektor aren’t enough to count as USP idiosyncrasies; Morris will live or die by voice and melody alone.

In both departments, she’s reasonably blessed. Her lustrous, emotive tones fill the Village Underground’s cavern, swelling around the Cloudbusting synthetic-string stabs of Way Back When, while the keening melodies of This Time and Not Knowing suggest that Adele might have to defend her title of World Piano Balladry sooner than she’d have liked. Airing her collaborations with Fryars and Clean Bandit, Morris proves she’s also adept at deploying modern pop-noir tricks, drenching new single Closer, Do You Even Know? and a final Love Again in crunchy laptop beats, house synths and pure-pop choruses until they resemble the bits of a London Grammar gig that wake you up. There’s certainly promise here; a shame it comes so frustratingly flat-packed.