Stephanie Dosen / Peter von Poehl / Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall, from Leeds, is first up tonight – a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar and some pleasant folky songs. He strums and picks out lovely melodies, despite having broken his thumbnail the previous day. Stand out tracks are a brand new song, aired for the first time, 'We Could Use Your Blood', and 'A Place on the Map' taken from his debut solo release 'Vultures'.



Next up is Swedish singer-songwriter Peter von Poehl who, rather incongruously, has Kurt Cobain's hairstyle combined with a voice that sounds uncannily like James Blunt. He's a bit of a character and tells us a couple of stilted but amusing stories between songs. The highlight of his set is a cover of 'Heartbreak Hotel' performed with a high-pitched vocal and laidback harmonica breaks.



The sylph-like Stephanie Dosen, hailing from Wisconsin, has brought a full band with her tonight – Fiona Brice and Vicki Matthews on emotive violin and cello and breathy backing vocals, and a lady called Kim on drums. There are a couple of songs during the evening when the drums are a little heavy and almost swamp the vocals but apart from these the whole sound is beautiful. Stephanie is also accompanied by her boss, Simon Raymonde, on bass. He runs her record label, Bella Union, and used to be one third of the Cocteau Twins who had a similar ethereal quality to their music.



Stephanie is showcasing songs from her sublime album 'Lily for the Spectre'. The music is somewhere between folk and alt-country, the lyrics are haunting and yearning, but it's the voice which is the most riveting – pure and pretty, dreamy and instantly calming. All the songs could be lullabies, though they don't send you to sleep, just make you feel warm and fuzzy, and soothed. She's not as bluesy as the current crop of Amy Winehouse successors and doesn't have the massive PR machine but her voice is exquisitely beautiful and the fact that the venue isn't packed to the seams reflects the lack of hype rather than any lack of quality.

Stephanie has a certain amount of kookiness, which is endearing rather than irritating, and an easy charm with the audience. At times it feels as though we’re at a stand-up comedy night with people laughing at her banter and the stories of bears with ice-cream headaches, her recent iTunes festival collaboration with José González (she's convinced she saw him shaking his head at her guitar-playing when she watched the video back), and tales of playing clubs in America for hard drinking, partying audiences who weren't the least bit interested in her floaty music and so she had to learn AC/DC and Lynyrd Skynyrd covers. Her chatting also helps distract from the amount of tuning between songs which she cheerfully acknowledges.



It's difficult to pick particular highlights but the memorable songs are the gently uplifting 'It's Only Getting Better', the celebratory 'This Joy' and her new single 'Vinalhaven Harbor', which the men in the crowd will no doubt be looking up the video for as she says that it makes her look like a slut. There is also the ghost story and title track 'Lily for the Spectre', the mournful 'Owl in the Dark' – "..now a dusty ghost is stirring and I wonder where you are..." and the song which she chooses to sing solo for her encore, 'We Are'. She tells us that she deliberately picked this new song to sing as a duet with José González at the iTunes gig, hoping that when she gets around to recording it, he may agree to do guest vocals. He'd be a fool not to!

For anyone in need of de-stressing or relaxation therapy, I highly recommend letting Stephanie's shimmering songs caress you, either through the live experience or via her fine album 'Lily for the Spectre'.

FUTURE GIGS

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