Ma Fleur has a complicated history, and is best described a screenplay recorded for a film that didn't exist until a friend took an early version away and began to write the words the music suggested. Passing words and music back and forth for the next two years they finessed the package, and now it's ready for release.

The first single, To Build A Home, features vocals by Patrick Watson who appears to have popped up out of nowhere; the adjective 'haunting' should not be bandied about as often as it is but reserved for airy, soaring voices like Watson's, which send tingles running up and down your spine and get the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention. The result of their collaboration is a mousse of a song, sweet and light yet lushly caressing, a delicious mix of tinkling piano with strings slowly introduced and built throughout, woven around the extraordinary vocal.

share:  Facebook | Digg | del.icio.us | more

Mercury Prize 2009 nominees