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Gabriella Cilmi is a 16-year old Australian who’s already made a considerable mark with her show on Later…with Jools and the single Sweet About Me, where she tramps all over her have ‘nice girl’ image. Add to this support slots with Rufus Wainwright and Nouvelle Vague and various soundtrack appearances and it seems that Island records are saying they’ve establish yet some other ’soul’ diva with a voice that’s experienced way beyond her tender age. Doesn’t it all well-grounded a small too familiar?

But it really seems unjust to refuse the endowment on display here. The writing (unremarkably shared betwixt Gabriella and her production team) is sound and varied enough to keep back you hearing. The persona projected is suitably feisty, which suits her delivery. Only her attempt at the Martha and the Muffins authoritative, Echo Beach (recorded as the theme tune to er…Echo beach, and included here as a bonus) is best glossed over. In fact that’s the best way to report it, coming as it does with a rubric so heights that it ceases to exist. Or maybe it’s just uptempo numbers that she can’t yet trade with. Terrifying is besides a minuscule hamfisted. She’s best on the sensual ‘classic soul’-styled numbers like Sanctuary or Safer. The production by Xenomania (Girls Aloud, Sugababes etc) is bright and bolshy - leaving tidy sum of space to allow the telling voice do its clobber. Cigarettes And Lies in particular is pitched barely right with its uneven blues-driven hooks.

The trouble english hawthorn be in the timing. The voice is doubtlessly phenomenal. But blindfold individual and play them this back to back with Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, Duffy and even (immortal help us) Anastasia and you’ll start to be a little confused. As is the way with a creative arena that’s also an industry, labels are unimaginative in nerve-wracking to force out feed us too often of something a little too formulaic.This is a shame, for you horse sense that somewhere inside all this is a lawful talent and identity hungriness to escape, but existence generically groomed to the point of extinction. If her management and record company could leave her alone for two or three days (and a real band of her own) this teenager crataegus laevigata well turn a personnel to reckon with.