Bring on the night

CD of the Week

JENNY LINDFORS
When the Night Time Comes Pentacle ****

This 21-year-old Dubliner knows what she likes: sweet, soulful folk singers such as Carole King, Laura Nyro and Sandy Denny. So it's handy that her superb voice is well able to emulate her folk heroines, and her songs are strong enough to avoid being shunted into A Woman's Heart territory.

Lindfors first appeared on the radar with her 2005 EP, Carry Us Away, and she has lent her vocals to musical pals such as Mundy, and to the soundtrack of The Halo Effect. She also, in true hippie chick fashion, hangs out with a loose musical collective known as the Happy Gang. But while her contemporaries are content to play the pretty foil to self-indulgent male folkies, Lindfors's talent goes way beyond second fiddle. In fact, judging from the lyrics of 2x1, this woman is happy in her own headspace. She's taken her time recording this debut, on which she plays guitar, piano, banjo and melodica, and sings up a quiet, skilfully pitched storm. The sound is bolstered by the acoustic guitar playing by Ben Kritikos, which conjures up some of the folkier moments on Led Zeppelin III.

Lindfors lacks the idiosyncratic individualism of Julie Feeney; songs such as Night Time, Voodoo and Looming are rooted in well- trodden folkways. Instead, hers is a more linear form of musical path, tracking back through the past with surefooted grace, particularly on Lovestage, Let the Seas Calm, Timewarp and Play it Away. This could give the cross-legged brigade a good name. www.myspace.com/jenny lindfors