Olof Arnalds
EP: Olof Sings
Label: One Little Indian
Tracks: 5
Website: http://www.myspace.com/olofarnalds

You'll have to travel some way to stumble over a more charming release, as Icelandic singer Ólöf Arnalds marks time while completing a new album with this highly desirable five-track EP of covers.

It's customary at this point in any positive appraisal of a covers project to reiterate how the best versions of other people's songs reinvent the original without obliterating its meaning - which is exactly what Ólöf does, particularly on her spine-tingling medley of Gene Clark's With Tomorrow and Springsteen's I'm On Fire.

Dylan's She Belongs To Me and Arthur Russell's Close My Eyes are given new layers with Ólöf's extraordinary fragile vocal that naturally draws comparison with her occasional collaborator Bjork.

Sometimes it's worth remembering that clichés are clichés because they have been proven to be true and so it is with the critical default position on cover versions. Or covers of cover versions, as in Ólöf's treatment of Neil Diamond's early landmark Solitary Man as interpreted by Johnny Cash.

The set closes out with Tropicalia pioneer Caetano Veloso's moving tribute to his sister, Maria Bethania, in which Ólöf cools the warmth of the original with a little Arctic sang-froid that sacrifices none of the emotional content.

Nick Churchill