I presume, if you were a music journalist, you’d have a bank of comparisons and influences stored away so that when you come across an emerging artist you have some way of identifying them to your readers. At the very least you might like to pigeonhole said artist’s style – you know, put them in a tidy little compartment so that your readers know what to expect when they listen.

The problem I’m facing is that while I’m used to interviewing Olympic gold medallists, best selling authors, the odd PoW, and yes, musicians, I’m not a music journalist per se. And now I’ve gone and tasked myself with previewing one of my guests’ upcoming releases and I don’t know if I’ve got the tools to do it. So forgive me, please, for dismissing any rule book which might or might not prevail in a situation like this.

I’ve never asked Meresha about her influences (she’s a previous guest here), but now that I’ve heard her newest EP Enter the Dreamland, I’m glad. Sure, her voice has been compared to Annie Lennox and certainly even my ear can pick out something of that velvety soulful timbre, but if anything Meresha’s is a voice more agile as it swoops and soars through the ranges of the EP’s title track. As for genre, tone, redolence, and all those other terms I want to use, Meresha exists in a bracket of her own.

I know, the same could be said of Lorde, Lady Gaga, Bjork, Cyndi Lauper and probably several dozen more, and in that respect I’m alluding to some kind of a comparison, but the fact that Meresha sounds like Meresha is, to me at least, the surest sign that her music is a big deal.

Still I’m in a quandary: I don’t want to sound like someone who has no idea what they’re talking about and more than that, I don’t want to sound pretentious. And yet I have to sum it up just the same. So while the music magazine doyens will give you the technicalities, I’ll give you the first thought which spills from my brain onto the screen in something that’s hopefully concise, possibly lucid, but certainly honest:

I listened to the Enter the Dreamland EP for the first time and thought, wow: this is original. I listened to it a second time and was hooked. I’m actually a bit scared of listening a third time..

Enter the Dreamland is released on June 23rd and available for pre-sale on June 12th. For more information go to meresha.com.

You’ll also find Meresha on:

Twitter: @Mereshas

Facebook: /Mereshas

Spotify: Here