CD CHOICE:Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush Winter and Winter*****

It seems to be Kate Bush's year. Her 2011 releases, Director's Cutand 50 Words for Snow,are charming critics and civilians alike, and the wider world seems to be waking up to her unique talent, not only as a performer but also as a songwriter.

But avant-garde New York vocalist Theo Bleckmann is no bandwagon jumper. He’s been listening to Bush’s otherworldly songs since he was a teenager and says she has been a major influence on his own distinctive style. “Her music has this thing that I love in art. You’re instantly drawn into someone’s universe without really knowing why, but somehow understanding everything in your heart.”

The title, a song from Bush's Hounds of Lovealbum, is well chosen. Bleckmann and his band approach the songs like aliens examining a new life form, as if they landed in Bush's back garden and said, "Take me to your Lieder!"

Always precise and technically meticulous, the singer pulls off that most difficult of balancing acts: being both adventurous and faithful to the material, probing each lyric for its meaning. The talented group, picked from New York’s fertile downtown scene, create a spacey, ethereal backdrop, investing already extraordinary songs with a wide-eyed sense of wonder and discovery.

Songs such as Cloudbustingand Running Up That Hillretain enough of their original atmosphere to satisfy Bush fans, but the group – including pianist Henry Hey, drummer John Hollenback and bassist Skuli Sverrisson – aren't afraid to stretch and find new openings in the material, such as the punked-up Violinor the hard-swinging Saxophone Song.

Credit is also due to producer Stefan Winter and his label, not only for their steadfast support of adventurous, uncommercial music, but also for the consummate style with which they present it. If plastic jewel cases are the paperbacks of the music industry, then Winter and Winter’s gorgeously lo-tech cardboard boxes are like first- edition hardbacks that laugh in the face of downloads and make albums worth owning again.

It’s hard to imagine a better Christmas present for the adventurous of ear. See theobleckmann.com.