ROSE KEMP - A Hand Full Of Hurricanes

English, and daughter of Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp (two members of folk-pop group Steeleye Span, contemporaries of Fairport Convention), Rose Kemp seemed almost destined to end up in music, folk music in particular.

Indeed, that's how it starts out: barely out of her teens, Rose throws herself into various projects rooted in folk close to tradition. Later, though, she discovers a desire to explore other sounds, or rather other musical attitudes, bringing out a darkly-tinged rock-blues side that seems to owe a great deal to Pj Harvey, while still remaining tied by a sturdy umbilical cord to the music she grew up with.

These two sides of Kemp's musical personality stand out clearly on "A Hand Full Of Hurricanes", her second album and debut for One Little Indian.

The rock ballad "Violence", interrupted by long, explosive solos of furious guitars, the opener "Little One", the excellent vocal performance on the taut, vibrant "Dark Corners" and, above all, the stretched-out dark-blues of "Orange Juice" do betray Harvey's influence, but they still carry a personality of interpretation and songwriting that's certainly remarkable given her young age (the English singer was born in 1984, after all). Striking is the way she handles the more varied episodes, especially when she's running the whole show herself; on "Tiny Flowers" she builds a song by layering her voice in different keys over an asynchronous tempo with sparse accompanying beats, while on "Skins' Suite" she plays a new Bjork for the first half, amid glockenspiel, guitar and assorted effects that conjure an unreal atmosphere, before shifting gears and closing with the most delicate glitch-folk.

It's precisely the lighter folk dimension that brings out the best of Kemp's talent, especially vocally: just listen to the intensely moving "Sister Sleep", a spine-chilling ballad for voice alone evoking faraway times and places, or the following "Sheer Terror", another folk piece for guitar and voice alone, while the closing circus-like march of "Sing Our Last Goodbye" turns out to be the only genuinely misguided moment on the record.

A sense of deja-vu, especially in the first half of the album, is inevitable, but Rose Kemp also shows an innate vocal and compositional talent that, at just twenty-three, is certainly worth noting. An artist to keep an eye on in the immediate future, especially if she manages to strike a harmonious balance between her folk roots and her dark-rock attitude.

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18/06/2007