Heavy High

Liz Horsman - a lady with a powerful name. And judging by Heavy High, the Ipswich-born singer's debut album, she's also a lady with a powerful talent.

Female singing-songwriting-guitarists tend to make first albums bursting with emotion, often anger. Liz follows on in this hallowed female tradition, marrying it with the guitar styles of men like Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Happy Mondays. It's an effective combination, making her style quite distinct.

The songs on Heavy High range from indie-guitar pop with knocked back vocals, to sad acoustic numbers in a soft voice. The title track is an excellent slide guitar piece; 'Grey Ways', an upbeat pop tune, uses strings over the traditional indie sounds; and 'Girlie She' repeats its piss-take refrain over and over to loads of Happy Mondays-esque guitar, giving it holly on the wa-wa.

Irony seems to be a trademark of Liz's lyrics; it's hard not to suspect a subtext in the lines from 'So Cool' - "You're so cool, so cool, you're just one of the boys/You'd like to take me home but you're too cool."

Overall, Heavy High shows a young female talent beginning to blossom. Most of the songs are good, and some excellent. Definitely one worth checking out, especially if you're into female vocalists of the Polly Harvey variety.