stand steadfast. I will not be shifted. It may have taken six months for this undeniable feeling to bloom, but now it's here and will not budge. If you told me a debut concept album about childhood, written and performed by a female stand up comic would be my favourite, most dearly loved album of the year at the beginning of 2002, I would have laughed and sneered at you. With derision. But then again life isn't a linear path, shaped by your own solid rock sense of predestination. It constantly surprises, shocks and disappoints. When We Were Small is a beautiful surprise.


Rosie Thomas was born into a family of musicians in Detroit, yet she first gained some popular currency as a stand up comic in the guise of a neck braced uber-geek called Sheila. She started playing her solo scripted songs (she served time in a Detroit band called Velour 100) to live audiences as well as starting an association with fellow troubador Damien Jurado. Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop, a man not known for his appreciation of melancholic folk pop, caught her act and signed her up without due hesitation. Set free in the studio she was told she could do what she wanted. Well, as long as it was the same array of affecting delicate songs he had seen her hypnotise audiences with.


What did she really want to do? The title says it all. She wanted to make an album about all the things that mattered to her: love, loss, and life's infinite variety. All of this, centred on her own family life and interspersed with the tape recordings her father made when she was growing up. The opener “Two Dollar Shoes” sets the tone. A declaration of defiant romanticism ("Kiss your lips before you leave me, make you see my love for you will never change."), it is tempered with the fear her beloved may eventually drift away.


"Farewell" follows. A heart lacerating lament of regret and soft, digging pain, it details the woes of parental divorce. The finishing line "All I got was just this broken heart from you" aims for and hits the gut; its coda, a snippet of Thomas as an infant priggishly snapping 'I'm done', makes it all the more devastating.


“Wedding Day”, an affirmation of freedom, trimmed with euphoria, determination and recklessness, is perhaps the finest proof of Thomas's supremely confident and expressive soprano delivery. A delivery that perfectly befits a grown up articulating the weird cocktail of terror and bliss that constitutes a kid's life. Passion, falsetto and hush are all applied at the appropriate moments. It makes Beth Orton sound like an ogre.


Only when she stumbles into Sarah McLachlan territory on “I Run” does she break the spell, albeit momentarily. The harsher, louder accompaniment does nothing to accommodate her voice, and evokes thoughts of her pouring sickly syrup over Jeff Buckley's “Witches' Rave”. It does not, however, pull the album off the rails. When it is slowed down to the chiming endsong “Bicycle Tricycle”, her wavering falsetto only adds to the poignancy of her pained admission, "I must confess you're my safety pin". Rounded out by the brushing of fingertips over the piano and more of the junior Thomas making background noise, for what seems like an unbearably long time, the album finishes in the same way you might be waving goodbye to someone as they slowly walk further and further into the distance. It feels like the perfect ending.


Like Josh Rouse's Under Cold Blue Stars, it is planted in a vanilla American family ideal of everyday incident and giant, helter skelter feelings, that form a patchwork of revelation. Unlike Rouse it is rooted in real, burning emotion, not some imaginary impression of a future life. The utter lack of pretence and the refreshing absence of irony is a joy to behold. Integrity runs through the album like a seam of gold.


Thomas breaks down no experimental or popular barriers. The guitar, piano and cello are kept simple and low key, and of course this album will be an anathema to those who deride the acoustic guitar crowd. Yet there's something equally tragic and stupid about dismissing an album because it has been slapped with a label as fatuous as 'electric folk'. Thankfully my own prejudices were overriden in the same way as Jonathan Poneman's probably were. Once in a while, we noise monsters bear testament to the old adage that music has charms to soothe the savage beast. It heartens me to think we are capable of cooling our love for guitar storms and Atari Teenage Riot volume levels.


Considering the tone of this review you may think, my God, this man is head over heels. Perhaps. I believe it's not an uncommon affliction amongst reviewers of this album. Yet Thomas has made what I think is the perfect personal album. The sort of personal album that defines the word genuine. Lingering, like only bittersweet memories of vanished childhood and lovelorn longing can, you may shed a tear or be filled with some kind of happiness. This much I do know: you'll be glad you've made its acquaintance.