I love Michelle Gurevich’s dark, subversive lyrics – all sung in that distinctive, contralto voice that seems to know a thing or two about life.

She started recording in her bedroom, her mouth close to the microphone so as not to disturb her flatmates. And her style is still relaxed and intimate, as if she is imparting a secret.

At the beginning of her career, she was invited on tour as the opening act of one of my favourite English singer-songwriters Patrick Wolf. (Gurevich was born in Canada, the child of Russian immigrants). It seems to me that Gurevich’s rather masculine energy is a mirror opposite of Wolf’s more feminine sensibility. I would love to have been at those concerts!

‘So many moments disappear[…] without leaving any trace’, she complains in an interview. Her songs are a beautiful protest against that vanishing.