Minnie Birch
Album: Settled
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 7
Website: http://www.facebook.com/minniebirch

Minnie's a Hertfordshire-based songstress who's already conquered a sell-out crowd when performing a support slot for Joan Armatrading (Joan being so impressed she included Minnie on her 56-track Local Talent CD collection); and on the strength of responses to an early pressing of Settled, her debut EP, she's now been selected for the long-list for the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition. And my own verdict, on hearing her ear-grabbingly charismatic, highly individual (if also slightly enigmatic) debut EP, is that Minnie really is a significantly fresh talent with a style and delivery that's all her own and really sounds like no-one else I can readily reference - except perhaps Emily Portman.

Longing and heartbreak, two of the familiar staples of singer-songwriterdom, are of course much in evidence in Minnie's writing, but there's more insight within than that hoary combination of topics might necessarily imply, and Minnie's observational skills demonstrate an uncommon level of ability to encompass the viewpoints of others (e.g. on Fight).

Elsewhere, as on the spooky Sea Shanty and Holy Saviour, Minnie's method, one that I'd probably be inclined to describe as ethereal storytelling, embraces an almost childlike naïvete, a wide-eyed nursery-room expression that conjures intimate imagery and yet embodies an almost perverse level of closeness and identity with the listener to whom she's reaching out.

In fact, Sea Shanty is such a complex, ambitious creation that it may take several plays to get closely acquainted with its layers. Instrumental support is, affectingly, mainly restricted to Minnie's own guitar, whose strumming can on occasion feel just a touch rudimentary but is refreshed with occasional piano or percussion embellishment courtesy of album producer George Shilling and a duet vocal by James Dalby on the uke-backed Icicles.

Confusingly, the back cover of the digipack bears the legend "all songs written and performed by Emily Jacques" - so do we assume that Minnie Birch is just Emily's stage-name? Whatever, the lady herself proclaims, on the press release: "I make sad and dreary music that I hope will leave you happy", which I guess is rather true in a strange kind of way; but in another respect it also leaves me very happy to have discovered another exciting new performer. And yes, another very special disc.

David Kidman