Martha St. Arthur

If country music’s all about life inside America, Martha St. Arthur’s modern Westerns are all about life outside it. Raised in the badlands of England’s deep South in an identikit commuter town, her early influences were from Hollywood’s 1990s global sprawl: hedonistic party pop, paint-by-numbers rom-coms and Singstar symphonies. Now under the altogether more benign influence of Laura Marling, Kacey Musgraves & Paul Simon, her punchy alt-country is preoccupied with politics, little England and the reality of life in the final years of liberal democracy. Contrary to lyrical indications, she’s actually quite a cheerful person.