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Fragile delivery hides a darker core

A little pocket angel in looks as well as voice, the darkness of Scattergood’s songs surprises given her ethereal aural and physical beauty. Despite more than a slight little-girl-lost image and a lot of the broken beauty of Skins' Cassie, her songs paint a dark picture, narrating life’s twists and turns in her unmistakeable breathy, but haunting, voice.

'I Hate the Way' is the 21-year-old's emotion-laden follow-up to last year's 'Nitrogen Pink' and paves the way for her 2009 debut album. Her Kate Bush-esque slightly fragile delivery might result in a bit of a Marmite situation - in that you either find it intensely irritating or are blown away by her. I was definitely the latter, loving the intense, almost painful delivery of lines such as ‘pass me the pills and I’ll go to bed’ and ‘I hate the way I bleed each time you kiss me’. Her fragility belies a harder, darker core and it takes several listens to peel away the dramatic layers.