Alessi's Ark @ Rough Trade East

I was up in London last Thursday, with not much to do and a whole day's travelcard to make use of so I popped over to Rough Trade East, near Brick Lane, to see Alessi's Ark. I hadn't really heard much of her stuff before this but had heard and read a lot of positive things about Alessi, so I was intrigued.
My intrigue turned into delight as Alessi performed 6 or 7 tracks of pure wonderment. Her simple guitar patterns were the perfect canvas for her to paint glorious pictures with a clever turn of phrase and imaginative imagery. This kind of lyrical storytelling reminded me of Joanna Newsom and Alessi also shares vocal similarities with Ms Newsom. Its an uncompromising voice but when the music and content of the songs are so caked in mystique and fantasy, it just works.
The set consists of some tracks from her debut album, Notes From The Treehouse, like the haunting The Horse and the lovely Over The Hill but she also aired some new songs, none I can remember the name of unfortunately, but all were mesmerizing.
When the power cut out mid-set, Alessi just step aside from the broken mic and performed a couple of tracks completely acoustically. It really showed the talent and confidence of this kooky young songwriter. Maybe kooky's not the spot on but Alessi has this cute, hippy thing going on.
She finished with full power and a rapturous applause from the small crowd that had formed and I left, in hope that the rest of my day would be filled with as much adventure and fantasy as one of Alessi's songs.

Alessi's Ark - Magic Weather

You can buy Notes From The Treehouse from Rough Trade and get a free ep