Laura Clapp - “Leaving Nashvegas”

Laura Clapp has a new CD out, and I’d highly recommend it to all.

Recorded (almost entirely live) in Nashville, it’s a fantastic collection of tracks. With stunning and direct songwriting, hooky choruses, great arrangements, and really well recorded and mixed, it’s a CD you could listen to over and over again.

It's also accompanied by one of the best constructed artist photographs I've seen - which somehow manages to combine music and artistry, a dichotomy between strength and a hint of crucifixion, wedding rings, and even matching coloured nails and watch face. I have no idea if that was all planned, but it's an amazing photograph either way.

Some of the really good tracks include the gorgeous acoustic guitar led “Back to Us”, “Beautiful Limbo” (which to my ears is dying to be catapulted into the charts in a fully blown studio recording), the haunting drawl of “Something about you”, and the devastatingly underdone “Not for Me”, which rounds off the collection.

You can get the CD from Laura’s website here – so get one, and if you are quick you can say you knew about her before she was huge.