Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library

Rating: * * * *

Holly Miranda doesn't need to have two first names to stand out - her intriguing voice and striking songs do it for her. Sliding into a niche of thought-provoking yet trendy kitsch, her debut album is a multi-instrumental keeper.

Miranda's talent dominated her previous band, Jealous Girlfriends, and now she's solo, has control of vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, synths, toy organ, toy piano, big piano and sleigh bells. She's an efficient artist and a go-getter too, having seized the skills of Dave Sitek, who recorded TV On The Radio, to produce the album, before she even had a record deal.

As its title suggests, The Magician's Private Library - not really her first album, as she recorded her own to sell at gigs but her first to hit stores - is peculiar. Opener Forest Green Oh Forest Green, a dainty little number that could be a vocal warm-up, sets a scene of smoke-shrouded mysteries that move between being quaint and haunting. The chimes and liquid lyrics of Waves "you must speak your life into existence ... this needless pain that stains your face" are followed by dark synths and morose vocals of No One Just Is.

Miranda may have rebelled against her Southern-Christian upbringing - where secular songs were banned - to make her music, but rather than sounding like a 20-something who moved to New York to go soul-searching, she sounds like she already knew what she was about.