They're already big in Britain, and this spring you can expect to hear a lot more from the latest crop of young songbirds. . .
ADELE On her debut album, "19," already a critical and commercial success in the UK, Adele Adkins takes a slightly different path from her sisters in song. Letting her north London accent shine through - "things" become "fings" - and eschewing pop polish, the 19-year-old comes on more like a vintage singer-songwriter than a pop star. Although Adele sometimes treads the same classic soul-saturated waters, she favors spare, acoustic arrangements with folk and jazz twists that are more in line with artists like Roberta Flack, Peggy Lee, and Corinne Bailey Rae. That is, if those women sang about the drama of teenage romantic entanglements ("Best for Last") one minute and did moving Bob Dylan covers ("Make You Feel My Love") the next. "19" is already available on iTunes and will get a proper US release this summer.
[Sarah Rodman]
DUFFY Welsh singer-songwriter Aimee Duffy is a classic rock archetype: the little girl with the big voice. She's the kind of singer that Phil Spector would've given his eyeteeth to prop up on his wall of sound in the 1960s. But it's the '00s, and the 23-year-old, who goes by her last name professionally, turned to Suede's Bernard Butler to help create the brightly produced sounds of her debut, "Rockferry." Tunes like the flirty first single, "Mercy," and the soaring title track fall right in line with numbers from predecessors such as Lulu, Ronnie Spector, Martha Reeves, and, more recently, Amy Winehouse. But while Duffy picks up the Motown/Stax, retro-soul thread, she is less a fount of tuneful angst than simple tunefulness. On May 13, US music fans will finally get to hear "Rockferry," which listeners from the UK to Italy to New Zealand have already sent into their respective top-10 lists. [S.R.]
AMY MACDONALD From Scotland comes Amy MacDonald, a fetching 20-year-old lass with a guitar, a strong will, thick eyeliner, and a voice that snaps you to attention. MacDonald is on the rootsier side of pop - more KT Tunstall than Lily Allen - and the '60s aren't exactly her guiding light. Her songwriting themes are universal, but her perspective is decidedly youthful. "Poison Prince" is a salute to forever-in-trouble rocker Pete Doherty, and MacDonald makes her rock-star ambitions clear on "Let's Start a Band": "Give me a stage and I'll be a rock 'n' roll queen/ Your 20th-century cover of a magazine/ Rolling Stone, here I come/ Watch out, everyone/ I'm singing, I'm singing my song." MacDonald's album, "This Is the Life," will be released stateside in August, but she'll preview her songs April 28 with her debut US performance at cozy Great Scott in Allston. We give her a year before she's headlining the Orpheum. [James Reed]
LAURA MARLING At a tender 18, Laura Marling is one of those rare young musicians who understands the enchantment in a stark, strummed guitar and quiet, careful melody. A preternaturally evolved singer and songwriter, the Reading native is shaping up to be the next torchbearer in an esteemed line of British troubadours - with an indie twist. The folk songs on her 2008 debut, "Alas I Cannot Swim," are as quirky as they are graceful, with unpredictable arcs and subtly ornamented hooks. Last month at the South by Southwest festival, the elfin blonde held a room of intoxicated club-hoppers in thrall, which is no small task for even the rowdiest rock band. As the only one of the current crop of British songbirds holding down the folk end of the spectrum, Marling looks poised to endure well beyond the shelf life of her pop-oriented peers.
[Joan Anderman]
