Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender

Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender - This is a stunning debut album for a number of reasons, good and bad. The songwriting is beautful. Joanna Newsom is a harpist writing folky, singer-songwriter stuff on this most unusual of instruments - face it, how many non-classical CDs can you think of that have the harp as the main sound? She writes wonderful, insightful lyrics. She also sings like the lovechild of Stina Nordenstam and Bjork reincarnated as a cat in heat. Her voice is one of those that you will either find eccentric and unusual or horribly shrill and intolerable. I'm somewhere in the middle as my better half has been playing her album non-stop and I can see how good the songwriting actually is even if I can't quite get used to her singing.

I'd certainly recommend to people to check this out, just expect some unusual sounds to come out of your stereo.