She screams originality, whispers of a creative spirit that hasn’t emerged from a xerox.

Kathryn Williams’ solo debut wears her Mercury nomination effortlessly. Even her drole title tells its own story: Williams’ little black numbers owe more to Nick Drake than Donna Karan.

A literate and occasionally obtuse storyteller, Williams belongs to the less-is-more school of songwriting. She renders meditations on the daily quirks and foibles of relationships into sublime skeins that flicker and ebb in and out of focus. In someone else’s hands, voice, guitar and cello could so easily smack of bedsit balladry, but here they coalesce in an entirely new compound.