Jake Bugg may be just 18 but he sounds much older, his songs of melancholic folk and bluesy rock, sound older still, with a stripped down rawness reminiscent of early White Stripes and the early days of rock’n’roll.

It is refreshing to find a young musician picking up a guitar and doing things in something of the old fashioned way. Bugg rattles through songs of both youthful swagger and real honesty as he paint us a picture of the world as he sees it. If one song could sum up his entire approach it would be ‘Trouble Times’. It offers an autobiographical window into life on a council estate, over a driving, rustic acoustic melody he sings “Stuck in speed-bump city where the only thing that’s pretty is the thought of getting out, there’s a tower block overhead, all you’ve got is your benefits and you’re barely scraping by.”

There’s been quite a lot of talk about this young man from Nottingham but on the evidence of his early singles, it’s very much justified. Looking forward to the debut album coming in October this year but until then we have these few gems to tide us over.

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