Listen to formation, look for the signs

"Following in the best of folk traditions, she tells self-contained stories that weave together to form a larger equally coherent pattern across the whole. It feels like a film which opens with airborne shots of beautiful panoramic landscapes with rolling mists and green mountains. The camera is languorous and unhurried in exploring this sparsely populated region. Then as they always do, in a series of zooming fades, the observing eye settles on a single figure sitting on some outcrop in the middle of nowhere. It turns out she's holding a guitar, and her name just might be Nadia Reid".

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"It took 24-year-old New Zealander Nadia Reid seven years to write the songs for her first album, because "I wasn't sure how to begin, or if I had it in me." But this doesn't sound like an album troubled by musical doubt; Reid's touch is sure throughout, as is her judgment. Her palette isn't broad, but it's expertly deployed - on the modal folk of Call the Days, she's reminiscent of Laura Marling; on Reaching Through, a full band gives her a bit of Teenage Fanclubesque oomph (like Angel Olsen, she's adept at switching from introspective and soft to loud and rocking); Just to Feel Alive is the kind of indie soul ballad that Matthew E White's Spacebomb collective specialise in. Reid's voice is wistful and reflective, sometimes blurring the syllables, and it gives this startlingly good debut a feeling of warmth, a welcoming Aga in the musical kitchen".

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