Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

"I was born in Georgia in the former USSR (Stalin, Shevardnadze) in 1984, living in Moscow for a while when I was three or four," says Katie Melua. When she was nine, life changed dramatically after her father got a job as a heart surgeon in Belfast. Given what we know of the fratricidal conflict in Georgia and the tribal war Northern Ireland some 20 years ago, this might appear as a frying-pan-into-the-fire move, but Melua insists that the people of Northern Ireland extended a warm welcome to her family: "I went to catholic schools in Northern Ireland while my younger brother went to a protestant school. My ambition when I was thirteen was to be a politician or a historian. I honestly thought I'd be able to bring peace to the world... If I ruled it! "

Thanks to Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and Georgia's "velvet revolution" that placed Mikhail Saakashvili in power late last year, 19-year-old Katie Melua has been able to devote her time to music making instead of mediating internecine quarrels. The result is the album "Call Off the Search". On first listening, the similarities between Melua's "Call Off the Search" and Norah Jones' "Come Away with Me" are striking. Sensual, warm, lazy, easy to listen to? the commonalities are all there. But Melua as more than just a pretty soundalike. Her influences range from Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Indian music, Irish folk music and, especially, Eva Cassidy, the American singer and fiddle player, who died in 1996 at the age of 33 following a battle with bone cancer. Standout tracks on "Call Off the Search"? A powerful interpretation of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" and a knock-out version of the traditional "Mockingbird Song". The next single to be released form the album will be the demonic blues "Crawling Up A Hill". It comes out on 29 July.