She sounds like a folk singer, her diction clear as a mountain stream while she weaves whimsical tales of ships (Night Before Mutiny), conversations with Venus (The Moths Are Real), and rivals who meet at dawn "with pens and open scorn" (Lady Fortune). But there is an eccentricity to Serafina Steer that resists categorisation, and fills her songs with surprises. One moment she is pastoral, as on Skinny Dipping, a gauzy reverie on nakedness in which her fingers skitter over her harp like dragonflies; the next tart and opaque, as on Ballad of Brick Lane, which starts off bemoaning the hipster hub of London before turning to more abstract territory. Disco Compilation is brilliant, building from a harp backing to a pulsing beat and a celebration of music's power to console. Jarvis Cocker – a fan of Steer's 2010 album, Change Is Good, Change Is Good – produces with a relish for her oddities that is infectious.
(Stolen Recordings)
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