The snow is turning gray, it's pristine purity has been polluted by the filth and stench of the metropolis. I'm not going out today. The cold is too much for my fragile Urban wardrobe. Instead I am going to sit at home and stare through a glass window dripping with condensation at a city that really does not suite its newly acquired layer of cold.

In the background plays Laura Gibson. Her scratchy vocal cuts through some welcome melody, to turn domestic solitude into something other than urban loneliness. This is music conceived within the immense and relentless natural beauty of Oregon, a place so stunning and peaceful that it has managed to permeate every verse of every song on Gibson's excellent latest record; La Grande, which is available through barsuk records.

I think I have found my soundtrack for this long and bitter winter.