Twining lyrical confessionals round downtempo mood studies is rarely the milieu of 22-year-old singer-songwriters, yet on this evidence Phoebe Bridgers isn’t your average young musician.

Early endorsements by Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst clearly gave the Los Angeles native a healthy dollop of self-confidence ahead of the sculpting of her debut album, the result being an intimate, hazy, multi-layered suite of songs that begins with Bridgers’ ballad Smoke Signals – a lullaby that could stop you in your tracks – and ends courageously with a masterly interpretation of the murderer’s lament You Missed My Heart, written by Mark Kozelek, which ramps up the song's uncanny sadness to a hitherto undreamt of degree.

In between Bridgers shifts from Americana (Scott Street) to piano balladry (Killer), folk rock (Demi Moore) and lilting pop (the Bee Gees strut of Motion Sickness) with the ease of a veteran, variously conjuring echoes of Judee Sill, Stevie Nicks and Bon Iver, casually wrapping words that speak of depression, loneliness and death in music that hovers with the delicacy of butterflies on a buddleia bush.

For a third or fourth album Stranger in the Alps would be remarkable; for a debut it is never less than exceptional.