Miss Quincy - Your Mama Don't Like Me

Gypsy blues, bluegrass, country 'n' western, rootin', tootin', twangin' numbers which sound like they're bashed out by married cousins on the front porch... Miss Quincy's debut album barely sounds like it belongs in 2011 at all. Let's be clear - Soundblab has no time for the kind of pathetically posed folksploitation peddled by Mumford & Sons, Even Laura Marling's critically lauded I Speak Because I Can was a work of forced, expertly studied folk whimsy rather than the real thing, full of "my lord went a-riding one morn" piffle.

Two things mark Miss Quincy (she doesn't appear to have a first name) out as something closer to the real thing: first, Your Mama Don't Like Me was recorded in her Canadian cabin during during a cold snap in which temperatures dropped to -40 degrees. Second, there's that brilliantly sharp album title which, coupled with an image of Qunicy brandishing a pistol on the cover, tells you all you need to know about a singer-songwriter who's more Patti Smith than Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. As she growls on 'Bad Luck Woman', a Memphis Minnie cover: "Any man I get/ if he don't get sick he'll die/ some other woman take him on the dog-gone sly". Meanwhile, on the windswept 'Dead Horse', her assessment is even more stark: ''Loving married men and whisky/ is like dragging/ It's like dragging a dead horse around.''

So while this young lady is undoubtedly playing a role, it's one she's able to inhabit to perfection. You genuinely would not want to cross her if you met her in a bar (which, judging from songs such as 'Sweet Jesus Café' and 'Whisky & Water', is her natural habitat). Nevertheless, she lets just enough vulnerability slip through for you to know these songs are coming from a genuine place. On 'Record Store', which boasts a virtuoso vocal performance, she sings: 'I love the idea of you/ and you're in love with the idea of me/ but I love you, baby, more/ and three women in your life/ makes a crowed record store''. The gentle weeping mandolin on that song also gives it real crossover appeal, suggesting Miss Quiny won't be staying put in the musical cul-de-sac she currently inhabits.

To be sure, Your Mama Don't Like Me is an acquired taste, and if bluegrass isn't really your thing, it's doubtful you'll want to stay for the whole album. However, anyone who can't resist the magnetism of the ballsy, defiant female artist, from Janis Joplin to Beth Ditto, who conquers heartache and prejudice with wit and fire, will find something to celebrate here.