HER first name is unusual, her voice even more so, but Party is a remarkable, distinctive debut album, far removed from standard singer-songwriter fare. It may not be a party record, but it is a cause for celebration, introducing a talent every inch as individual as Kate Bush, Stina Nordenstam, P J Harvey, Julia Holter or Emiliana Torrini.|

Her connections are impeccable: Harding departed her New Zealand home for "an intensive two-week immersion" in the Bristol studio of John Parish, whose alchemy had worked wonders for Harvey and Sparklehorse. He duly obliges with a soundscape full of surprises but strangely beautiful and beautifully strange.

Harding also put in a call to Perfume Genius's Mike Hadreas for some typically exotic guest vocals, while her siren singing, sometimes childlike, other times as dark and mysterious as Marlene Dietrich, entices you into her spider's web.

Imagining My Man is beyond anything the mechanical Florence Welch has over-sung; What If Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming is the question of the day.