Roxanne de Bastion
Album: Seeing You (EP)
Label: Hidden Trail
Tracks: 4
Website: http://www.roxannedebastion.com/

This young troubadour singer-songwriter was born and raised in Berlin, but in 2007 she flew to London on a one-way ticket in order to follow her dream and take her songs to the world. And she seems to have the talent to match this fairytale, if the success of her debut album The Real Thing is anything to go by.

Her songs are instantly communicative; they may in a way seem to be couched in a late-60s mould, and yet her singing voice is more contemporary in tone and timbre - it's pure and unadulterated (I'd hesitate to use the word "perfectly formed" without sounding pretentious, but that's how it comes across, and yet the term "perfectly natural and unaffected" could equally apply). Her sense of melody is sure, as the earworm-inducing opening (title) track of this beguiling EP demonstrates, with its expressively inward-looking lyric and tricky yet memorable chorus. After which, on Wasteland, Roxanne then delivers her pithy ruminations on the tearing-down of Berlin's East Side Gallery and its impact on the city.

Rerun reflects on her own insistent questioning of the practice of personal gratification, while the EP returns full circle with the delicate, if awkward romanticism of Same Moon. There's a modicum of intelligent supporting instrumentation - a piano here, a cello there, a touch of percussion sensitively applied - but the sheer stylishness of Roxanne's invention and vision is both assured and in clear focus throughout.

David Kidman