"I sold my body to the singer next door"

After several errors in the past, I've learnt that it's a mistake to buy albums on the strength of just one song you like (damn you, Mary J. Bilge!). But there's always an exception to every rule. Which must mean there's an exception to that rule as well, which means that somewhere there's a rule that there's no exception to (this is like when I try to understand time travel films...). Anyway, the exception to that first rule I mentioned, way back when, is Caroline Martin.

Caroline Martin - The Singer mp3 (available for 7 days)

I heard the above track on John Peel's final Festive Fifty and fell in love with a girl and a guitar. Her style has been described as anti-folk (no, I'm never quite sure what that is either) but it's probably easier if I say that her music reminds me quite a lot of Cat Power. If I had to describe her full length debut, I Had A Hundred More Reasons To Stay By The Fire, in just two words, those words would be 'sparse' and 'intimate'. If I was allowed to use a third word, I'd probably choose 'supercallifragilisticexpialidocious'.

Caroline Martin - Winter Blues mp3 (available for 7 days)

Earlier this year, Caroline Martin released an EP of demos entitled Broken. You can stream at least one song from that, plus 3 others, at her myspace page. That's also the place to go if you would like to buy the EP or the wonderful I Had A Hundred More Reasons To Stay By The Fire. You can buy both of them - that's 23 songs - for a trifling £16 including P&P. Hoorah!