If Vacaville-reared, Oakland-rooted Nedelle Torrisi is anywhere as smooth live as she is on her debut album, Republic of Two, she's gonna be a star. She's gonna blow up like a sex bomb – except she's so not, I'd say, scanning her artfully artless CD sleeve. She's gonna be big like Astrud, Darlene, Laverne, and all of those other pop-hyphenate chanteuses who can make your happy hour by serving up something dulcet. She may even earn the right to that first name-only handle.

Torrisi's album exudes that kind of confidence, decorated with silky yet simple vocals recorded to emphasize intimacy, and girded with originals that sound like lost tracks by early Everything but the Girl or some other retro-minded, blue-eyed and pale-faced English band with a good R&B and jazz record collection. Who knows – with the unexpected yet welcome changes of pop-jazz numbers like "Come Around," doo-wop-infused tunes like "I Lied," and sweet bossa nova fare like "Lament," this charming vocalist could be the next low-key young diva likely to succeed, right up there with that other respectful girl singer, Norah Jones.

Nedelle plays a CD-release party Fri/23, Edinburgh Castle Pub, S.F. (415) 885-4074. (Kimberly Chun)

Stratford 4
Love and Distortion (Jetset)

The liner notes to the Stratford 4's Love and Distortion suggest the listener lie down, take the phone off the hook, and "turn off the overheads and turn on the Christmas lights above the stereo." This is sage advice, in that much of the album is about being horizontal. "Couldn't we stay in bed?" singer Chris Streng pleads over swirling guitars in "Kleptophilia." Luckily for me, I was doing just that when I put in the CD – covers pulled up, trying to find something smokable in the butt ends of a heartache.

Streng walks the fine line between posing and pathos, at times almost adopting a phony Brit accent. Think early Psychedelic Furs – before every song had the word heaven in it–but less sardonic. Think Jesus and Mary Chain with slightly less distortion and way more reverb, less swagger, and more love – not so much getting ahead on your motorbike as riding aimlessly through Golden Gate Park on a bicycle, especially if it's an antique three-speed with gull-wing handlebars and a chain guard.