And relax...

I mentioned Kathryn Williams (and mispelt her name) alongside Ed Harcourt earlier this week and found that she has a new album (Leave to Remain) out now. I love surprises like this.

She's an accquired taste is our Kathryn. Her arrangements are sparse but full of melody. After coming to prominence in 2000 with the mercury nominated Little Black Numbers I never really took any notice until I saw her play live with Ed at the NME gig a couple of years ago. Her performance was engaging and intimate. She swore like anything and was belly laugh funny in between songs. She was also pregnant and hoping to banish her demon of crippling stagefright by playing as many gigs as humanly possible in her condition: "After I released ‘Over Fly Over’ I toured solidly for three months. I decided to overcome my stagefright by hard graft. I toured for most of the time I was pregnant. When I first had Louis and was in the middle of the euphoria of him being born and feeling reborn - it was all a bit bloody S Club 7."

Kathryn gets lost in the one-way tunnel to Greenwich.

She's currently being mentioned in the same breath as the current crop of female singer/songwriters, but, after 8 years of recording, she's seen it all before: "I’ve been labelled in with the singer-songwriters, then with the NAM/New Acoustic Movement, then I was put in the Outsider group. Then I was shoved in with Dido and Norah Jones. And then it was KT Tunstall and Jem and all of that. I’m just in a car passing these things. If people wanna wave to me while I go past then that’s fine. But I don’t belong to any society. I don’t go to any parties and meet these people. It’s good, ‘cos it tends to make people think I actually have friends in music."

Kathryn's Leave to Remain is to be found here.