Miramar

The traditions of few places in Europe have been as overwritten as those of the Balearic island of Mallorca. Even in Spain it's regarded as a tourism cash-cow. In the UK, ‘cultured’ visitors might extend their curiosity to anecdotes about Deià and the expat intelligentsia. It's therefore heartening to know that 25-year-old Júlia Colom, from Valldemossa – round the corner from Robert Graves’ house, as it happens – has embarked on a mission to reclaim her island's oral traditions through performances of its folk inheritance as well as original songs. Her first album features ten powerful and beautifully crafted compositions that foreground her ethereal vocals against beguiling electronic textures and understated Spanish guitar. An old religious song she was taught by her grandfather was the inspiration for ‘Estròfica’, a raw, rap-driven chant that suggests salvation will not be God-given but may possibly lie in this unsettling music. Though probably not. ‘Camí Amunt’, her debut single, is a pared-down tragic little beauty, with Colom's vocals by turns plaintive and strident. Even grown women and men not fluent in mallorquí will weep. ‘Canta Para Seguir’ introduces a noirish, flanged electric guitar to great effect, dumping the listener in Mallorca's hot, desertified heart by way of Arizona. Like Silvana Estrada and José González, this consummate artist applies an indie-rock savvy to her reworkings of folk song, but this doesn't limit her as singer or composer. The holiday paradise is re-evoked on Miramar – a monastery, but perhaps the hotel you stayed in once – as a very real and sometimes infernal site of social and personal trauma and revelation. A bewitching and dark debut.