Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/nicolalester

Colours is the debut lp of Melbourne native Nicola Lester. Lester’s rich, breathy voice and accomplished songwriting belie the fact that she came to music relatively late in life. A politics and economics graduate, at 25, having never played an instrument before, but having a head full of melodies and songs, Lester decided to learn music, first teaching herself the piano and then enrolling in a composition course with the help of a few four-track recordings. Before graduating, with fellow student Joel Ritchie, she contributed the plaintive, spare score to the short film Cracker Bag, which went on to win Best Short Film at Cannes.

When school was out, Lester started her own jingle-writing business, putting her natural affinity for melody to work, penning tunes for Michelin and Clarks shoes. Then something unexpected happened: people fell in love with the songs, moreso than the products they were supposed to be selling. They started asking where they could buy this bewitching music, and why its creator didn’t have an album. Enter Love & Mercy, who encouraged Lester to lay down the songs that became Colours, a record that is much more than the sum of its parts.

A beautifully full, emotionally honest collection of songs, Colours weaves a tapestry out of a diverse set of experiences and feelings, including Lester’s work with women in the juvenile justice system and her experience of becoming a mother. It’s a record, she says, about ‘life and all its marvellous colours’. Colours’ mostly piano-led songs give ample space to Lester’s spellbinding, nimble pipes, and her tales of healing, nurturing and becoming human, its power in its deceptive simplicity and delicate, winsome melodies. Featuring Libby Chow (Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set), Gray Taylor (Flying Scribble) and Myles Wooton (The Panics), Colours was recorded and mixed by Matt Calia and Matt Vought (Cat Power, Augie March) and is out now through Love & Mercy.