Molly Payton: YOYOTTA (digital outlets)

Sometimes the first track on an album is an announcement of what is to follow, although increasingly we have notice a number of artists ease their way slowly – and sometimes at great length – with that first piece.

So as with the book/cover cliché which contains an element of truth, it's best not to make up your mind just one track.

Case in point this debut by London-based local Molly Payton which kicks off with the self-pitying Asphalt: “I forgot to eat breakfast for the third day in a row. I want to be happy, I don’t want to be beautiful. You make it look easy. How do you switch it off when the world gets heavy. It keeps going when you’ve had enough . . .”

This would suggest a lot of emo and psychic damage on songs which are cathartic and confessional having been a teenager trying to make it in the cruel or indifferent music business.

Some of that is sort of true and her father went to prison.

So she deals with that too: overtly on the Thrown Over about being forced to grow up fast (“Every day I’m getting older I wish that things went slower”) and the seething title track where abrasive guitars carry barely suppressed rage and disappointment: “When I visited you, you couldn’t look me in the eye. Time’s been cruel to you and I guess so have I. I can’t stand to see you hurt even after what you’ve done.”

Payton works some familiar furrows here: grungy pop-framed rock on Accelerate and emotions worn on the skin on A Hand Held Strong: “It’s the little things that keep me going. Cups of coffee, walks alone, a hand held strong, a kiss dealt softly. Friends who stay when you need them most”.

Themes are about wanting to slow adulthood down and confusion (“my head’s a teenage bedroom floor”), common enough sentiments at her age.

But with an album that's both step up and emotional clearing house, she's on her way somewhere.

You glean that from the insightful Get Back to You: “I’ve been a little bit listless, tried to put some distance between myself and the past. But sometimes it comes up to greet me and it kisses me sweetly, then ties me to the mast of a ship floating softly through memory, tipping ever so gently until it starts to sink. Then I’m recalling that feeling of falling, all those times he pushed me over the brink”.

Your average emo-saturated teenager doesn't work a metaphor like that.

So don't judge this or her by that opening track, effective though it is.

Incidentally, the album title is an acronym from “you're on your own this time, again.”

She sounds confident enough being out there.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here