Sara Storer

Talk to people about Sara Storer and the same words keep being used: 'real', 'unaffected', 'authentic'. It's partly a way of acknowledging that she's lived the life she sings about – growing up on a farm in Victoria's Mallee, her grandfather a pioneer of the district, then teaching in tiny communities in the Northern Territory.

Paul Kelly, Australia's master-songwriter, may have best captured her unique talent: 'She's found her own way to sing the stories that are all around her and then inside her bubbling out. She doesn't copy over-emotive, fake sincere twangy country singers from overseas. She's found her own restraint and steel and lets her songs do their sweet, sly work.'