Several years ago a friend gave me Mary Chapin Carpenter's little known first album, Hometown Girl, and I knew immediately she was something special. Her subsequent rise to stardom confirmed this. A year or so later I heard Shawn Colvin's demo tape and caught her act at a benefit in Baltimore and again I knew. Once again I have gotten that feeling about a new performer, this time in the form of Vicky Pratt Keating. No sappy cliched singer-songwriter is she, but a truly unique, penetrating artist whose songs can both mesmerize and stop you dead in your tracks. Imagine the result if Nanci Griffith, David Byrne and Kate Bush were somehow fused into one body (but leave out Byrne's looks) and you might get the idea. This is beautiful, creative songcraft at its best.

Keating has been tearing up the Washington, D.C. area music scene for several years now and has headlined at nationally famous venues such as the Birchmere, Iron Horse, and Bitter End as well as the Kerrville Folk Festival and many others. She's opened for such luminaries as Richard Thompson (Shawn Colvin also recently had this honor), Laura Nyro, Aztec Two Step and many others. With a resume such as this, one should expect greatness and greatness one gets. On her third album, Blue Apples, Keating shows off her prodigious songwriting talent and voice with a collection of original songs that hasn't left my CD player for a week. (Quite an accomplishment since there are still a few hundred albums on my shelves I haven't gotten around to listening to yet.) Particularly intriguing was the song, "NY 10/11/91," with the refrain "I don't know why I am not in love with you," a bittersweet love song with imagery uncommon to this genre. Her song "Buffalo" is vaguely reminiscent of Griffith's "Deadwood, South Dakota," with its Native American theme and incisive message. Throughout her music is the contrast between her delicate, ethereal voice and her powerful lyrics which suggest anything but delicacy. Her cast of sidemen on the album (including Mary Chapin Carpenter's guitarist Pete Kennedy) and co-producer/keyboardist Bob Read join together to create songs that can be either enjoyed in the background just for their lushness or listened to in depth for the meaning of their lyrics. A prime example is the song "Shoot for the Moon," which sounds like an Enya/Richard Thompson collaboration -- a haunting melody which I have yet to figure out, but which is imminently soothing at the same time.

After all the comparisons it must be said that Vicky Pratt Keating is a remarkable original voice in the sea of clones and it is this originality that will carry her far in the music world. We are fortunate that she happens to be passing though this area as part of an extended national tour and will stop off in Charleston on Sunday, March 28. Be the first on your block to see this talented musician before her name is a household word and tickets cost three hours salary.