Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is almost nothing like listening to a strong positive woman perform the music she wants to and recording it with no hindrance, no outside thought of what other may think and best of all, no use of overtly sexual tactics in which far too many young female pop stars resort to in a wide of the mark belief that their music empowers young girls but also converts boys to their cause. For brains and outstanding ability will always beat the sexualisation of a song, the likes of Kate Bush, Nicola Bendetti and Tori Amos are more in keeping with observing a positive female role for both genders than the likes of anyone who has to expose more than their thoughts on screen.

Into that strong, independent and musically astute role must now stand Laura Victoria and her fantastic debut album Head Above Water. Not only does the album ripple with quiet determination, it also confidently crashes against the banks of life and swells and rages like a tempest catching hold of a super-liner and giving it the biggest battering known to humanity.

Strength of character is sometimes confused with arrogance, it is a mistake that many fall into to their shame and almost betrays a shallowness that doesn’t deserve to be there. Anyone confusing strength with anything other than intensity and potent depth of feeling in Laura Victoria’s work will not understand the beauty that combines between piano, cello and Jo Cooper’s fiddle and banjo, the complexity between stirring piano and Robin Allison’s double bass and the arch built and fleshed out by some really tremendous songs.

Tracks such as Half-Hearted Love, Sleeping Is Not On My Mind, the incorrigible If Hell Freezes Over and the temptation that finds itself the centre of attention in Across A Crowded Room all mark themselves out as nothing less than attractive stories of growth that place womanhood at the right side of positive role models rather than relying on overt sexuality. The truth of a women’s world and how much in truth they teach us as a society rather than being dependent on the wrong type of exposure.

Head Above Water is an excellent debut, sublime in spirit and wonderful in its final delivery.

Ian D. Hall