Oliver Gray

For many Winchester music lovers, the absolute highlight of last year was the sensational performance by Texan singer-songwriter Sarah Sharp at the Railway in June. The only disappointment was that a problem with the customs meant that Sarah had no CDs on sale.

Well, the wait is now over, because Sarah's first full-length album is complete and just available. And what a revelation it is. Any worries about how her extraordinary stage act could be translated onto CD are dispelled from the first moment. She and her band have gone for broke in a major way, with a richly orchestrated and dynamically produced album of enormous depth and substance.

Recorded over a period of months in Dan Workman's legendary Sugar Hill Studio in Houston , then subsequently mastered at the Hit Factory, this is the sound of an artist who has found the right collaborators, in particular a musical genius by the name of Kevin Ryan. It's no surprise that when you try to get to his website, you end up somewhere called "Recording The Beatles", such is the quality of the analogue keyboard stylings and arrangements which he contributes, placing the songs in an entirely appropriate aural context. It's not unlike what the White Stripes have been aiming at with their more recent recordings, though stylistically a million miles away. You feel that the achievement here is what Heather Nova was after when she recorded with Mercury Rev. I can pay no higher compliment than to say that Ryan can now be thought about in the same breath as Dave Fridman.

If you haven't come across Sarah before, treat yourself to a listen to an American artist who is seemingly not scared to tread her own path. No watered-down alt-country here. Her palette covers everything from melancholy ballads such as "Time Capsule" to whimsical slices of life like "Coffee Shop Song" or the craziness of her show-stopping three-minute soap opera "Finally", all presented with total integrity in a voice which is little short of astonishing. And unusually for today, the overall atmosphere is almost entirely "up".

This is an artist whose day has come. What's more, she'll be touring the UK later in the year. You'd be mad to miss it.