Timeless New Music in Your Grandma's House Soho.

When asked to be the Roulette's writer in the smoke, I could have mistakenly assumed I'd made it big. An all access areas to glittering music events most people only dream of; hang with Kate Moss, abuse free alcohol and generally live out some kind of rock and-or roll fantasy. I was willing to take one for the team.

Now, of course it isn't like this, but them the breaks and in this respect the music fantasist in me will always lose the battle to my music enthusiast-realist tendencies. It's always going to be more interesting checking out new music then it is ever hanging with some NME over endorsed act, with here today, gone tomorrow written all over them.

So here I am at the Bourne & Hollingsworth off Oxford Street for 'Living With Ghosts' the single launch of folk duo Smoke Fairies on the recommendation of Mof, who generally knows the way the wind blows when it comes to quality music. From the outside it could be a swish wine bar. I'm near Soho after all. Inside I'm relieved to find more comfortable surroundings, what reminds me most of some fifties living room, read your grandma's house, with added bar room setting.

Kamila Thompson, who opens is a well meaning folk singer, whose simple songs perhaps do not offer much more than dreamy wonders perhaps, with lines like, "Little boy blue, I miss you", lyrically taking the listener nowhere, the performance however is always striking and shows genuine promise.

Definitely one to watch, as suggested in the line, "Ladies should not drive nice cars. They only break our hearts" Thompson is someone starting to use sly humour to get out of the usual generic traps. There's another joke in that line somewhere, but I'm too much the gentleman to say, and wouldn't want to sully the Roulette name with accusations of sexism.

Boy-girl blues stomp is almost a reoccurring danger within music of late, with Congregation ticking all the boxes. Though, at least it is possible to be thankfully they are not following some kind of Kills style, dress right, date the supermodel, forget to write half the tunes style musical development.

Admittedly the vocals are a little too mannered, impersonating the requisite style of a blues style singer without the depth, though thankfully the music has the drive and pulse some in this genre find hard to summon. But for all the energy the music inevitably lacks innovation, so that feeling of repetition creeps in. Perhaps I'm knocking it too much? And all the same it's hard not to love it. They do enough of what a live band should do, capture their songs in a moment, so no one can criticise them for not doing that.

If it has taken me time to get to the Smoke Fairies, it is perhaps because the best things are really worth waiting for. The intimate local of the Bourne & Hollingsworth is perfect for the Smoke Fairies folk vinaigrettes. The atmosphere and heat have been building to their appearance. Anticipation, though could be all smoke and mirrors if the music does not match it.

Tales of lost love is not all uncommon in folk, especially as the impression from a laymen to the genre is that it can often lead to a certain amount of death too. But the instant impression is that Smoke Fairies use these sort of expectations to their advantage.

Drawing you into something, you think you know, the Smoke Fairies musically take you further than you'd expect the style to allow. It might be here, that I risk falling into a heavy cliche of words, such as ethereal, sweeping, majestic. And while they may apply there is more to it than that.

Nature and a desire to travel also play a significant part in the music, from 'Troubles' "Out of of the northern sky, over the land where the ice fields lie." The ordinary and everyday come alive so vividly, with the only musician it comes close to reminding me of is Laura Veirs' ability to marry nature and people's place within it, with such clear imagery.

The single "Living With Ghosts" is a song of sombre yearnings; lyrically embedding itself from the first line, "You to me, are only a memory got a flame still burning where I knew it shouldn't be." and musically haunting and generally moving.

Their songs - such as "When You Grow Old", "The Road Is Long" - forgo age and insight, and lodge into the head through shear weight of melody and urgency of presence. Both voices compliment the sound, and are never too much for the delicate numbers or not enough for the more forceful pieces.

And in lines such as 'Fences' "I've been bad, i don't want to be bad anymore" lyrically and vocally playful. It is this variety that keeps you transfixed, never feeling like the Smoke Fairies are repeating themselves or folk tradition.

Smoke Fairies will be playing a Rough Trade East in store on 22nd August.

Visit the myspace for Smoke Fairies here.

Simon J Hill