Lisbee Stainton
Album: Go
Label: Marionet
Tracks: 12
Website: www.lisbeestainton.com

Having attracted a wealth of high praise for her 2009 album, Girl On An Unmade Bed, Lisbee Stainton's next move is bound to elicit much interest in singer songwriter circles. An accomplished performer - she played to 30,000 souls in the O2 Arena before she was even signed, then supported Joan Armatrading and Paul Carrack on tour - and she musters all her experience here to turn deliver a set of songs whose depth and maturity belies her tender 23 years.

Of course every solo female performer within tuning distance of an acoustic guitar is bound to draw parallels with Joni Mitchell. But it's an occupational hazard that Lisbee Stainton appears better able than most to cope with - the bonus tracks, Millions of Flowers and Follow, share Mitchell's way of advancing folk-pop way beyond genre boundaries and investing it with a kind of late afternoon melancholia born of lyrical inventiveness and deft arrangements. Follow adds some tasteful country steel guitar twang to the mix, producing a musical setting well suited to its lyrical exploration of trust and devotion.

But for all that, Go is the sound of a young artist establishing her own voice and shedding the confines of her influences. Find Me Here delves deep into the human soul, a sorrowful lament from a suicidal lover; while We Don't Believe In Monsters ploughs a rich furrow of self-doubt and The Archives draws on Max Arthur's book Forgotten Voices crafted from the Imperial War Museum's recordings of WW2 eye witness accounts.

Go is the kind of record that will attract the plaudits it so richly deserves, but will continue to be discovered for years to come

Nick Churchill