Consider the odds. Schuler, a classically trained violinist and singer, spent those years becoming a mother and, by her own account, lending her voice to other people's machines. Returning from such a hiatus usually means overcompensating, with louder drums, grander gestures and a desperate flinging of glitter. "So Hard" refuses all of that. It is a song of poise rather than panic, built to sit comfortably on a radio playlist and then quietly refuse to leave your head.

The credit for the writing goes to Anna Neale, and it is a smart commission. Neale's gift, evident here, is for the economical, instantly graspable chorus, the sort that sounds like you have known it for years by the second listen. That is not a small talent. Plenty of songwriters labour for decades to produce something so apparently effortless, and plenty more mistake complexity for depth. Neale gives Schuler a melody with no wasted motion, and Schuler, wisely, does not oversell it.

Because it is the voice that matters here. Schuler sings with a warmth that is almost unfashionable at a time when pop vocals are routinely buffed into anonymity. Her tone is lush but never syrupy, intimate without tipping into the confessional. You can hear the conservatoire training in the control, in the way a phrase is shaped and then released rather than shoved out of the door, yet it never sounds like a recital. If her voice has been working in the background of other artists' records for years, "So Hard" is the moment it steps into the light and stays there. It is a voice you recognise, which in pop is rarer and more valuable than virtuosity.

Andy Prinz's production, meanwhile, deserves a nod for what it declines to do. Prinz has three decades of Swiss electronic craft behind him, and the lesson of such experience is knowing when to leave a space alone. The sheen is polished but not plasticky, and the arrangement keeps its attention on the vocal rather than competing with it. It is club-literate pop that has no need to prove it can survive a club.

The public, it seems, agrees. By late September the single had reached 110 radio stations across 42 countries, with 277 detected airplays, rotation on Radio Swiss Pop and a place on 14 Spotify playlists. These are not figures to alarm Taylor Swift's accountants, but for an independent act returning from a long absence they amount to a quietly emphatic vote of confidence. Swiss radio was playing the song before it was even out, and a local station gave Schuler an entire hour of airtime, which is the sort of thing that happens when programmers genuinely like a record rather than merely tolerate it.

Is "So Hard" revolutionary? Of course not, and it never pretends to be. It is something better in its modest way: a beautifully made pop song, sung by someone who has plainly earned the right to sing it. It carries no bitterness, no score-settling and no manufactured drama about the time away. The title promises struggle, but the performance delivers ease, which is rather the point.

Pull n Way are back, and the nicest thing about it is how little fuss they make. With "Body Ground" featuring LAV X & MKEY next in line, the signs are good. On this evidence, Schuler and Prinz have lost nothing in the interval and gained a certain unhurried confidence. A comeback this assured makes the rest of us feel we should have been paying closer attention all along.