Her debut album has been 10 years in the offing – and it's causing quite a stir. Tony Clayton-Leameets the grateful and grounded Sarah Rumer Joyce

IMAGINE AN upbringing that is defined by nothing other than yourself and your immediate family. Imagine an otherworldly landscape where, as a child, you are allowed to roam free and make up your own amusements while adults dally with golf, affairs, bridge, searing heat, cocktails and amateur dramatics.

Sarah Rumer Joyce doesn’t have to imagine these things: as a child she lived in expat compounds, communities and colonies, nurtured by both a spirit of adventure and a world-weary outlook.

Rumer – the name comes from the author Rumer Godden, whose 1953 book,

Kingfishers Catch Fire

, was on a list of preferred reading material bequeathed to her by her mother – is causing a stir at the moment with her forthcoming debut album,

Seasons of My Soul

. You can safely bet the 31-year-old’s name will be on every list of music acts to watch out for in 2011.

The album, which fuses slow-burning soul with finessed Burt Bacharach-like arrangements, has been a long time coming, she knows. Something that takes a long time to complete can lose something intrinsic along the way, but one listen to

Seasons of My Soul

and you can tell that it and Rumer are the real deal.

There is an Irish connection, too. She says the Rathgar-based father of her grandmother received commendation from the Vatican in recognition for his services to the Catholic Church.

Rumer herself is Catholic, occasionally goes to church, admires the sense of ceremony and ritual and, through her music, at least, points to the notion of suffering as a means to understanding. Her album, she says, is like a lucid map to her insecurities, her fears. “When you show your vulnerabilities, most people don’t want to attack you,” she says. “If you come clean, are completely transparent in your songwriting, then people don’t want to take a pop at you.”

Perhaps the major influence in her life was her mother, who died of cancer in 2003 and in whose memory

Seasons of my Soul

is explicitly crafted and dedicated. “Songs such as

On My Way Home

are about the journey of my grief,” Rumer says, “and about the bewilderment you find yourself in when you lose someone you love, especially mothers. I was 22 when she died, and I started asking all of these existential-like questions, which eventually ended up as songs. The anger of grief, as well, is expressed in a song such as

Take Me As I Am

, where you need a form of unconditional love to get you through.”

When Rumer’s family returned to England from Pakistan (where she was born), her parents separated, so she and her siblings divided their time, after years essentially following the sun, between Cumbrian market town of Carlisle, in northern England, where her father had moved, and the New Forest, in southern England. Settling in one spot was equal parts liberating and worrying, as Rumer realised that, figuratively, she had nowhere to go.

Leaving school at 16, she started drifting yet again but was stopped short by two life-changing events: the emigration of her father and the news that her mother had cancer. She was becoming quickly drawn to misery. “I had my brothers and sisters, but I didn’t have the family structure that I needed to support what was a precarious journey into pursuing a creative career. You need financial support for that, but I only had myself to rely on, and all the jobs I did along the way were to help with that.”

She still doesn’t feel totally secure or supported, she says, despite the strong interest in her music from most quarters, and the interesting details she drops into the conversation, such as that her boyfriend’s father is the well-known music-industry A&R man and record producer Muff Winwood, brother of the noted singer Steve). “I’m still not there yet. I’m living with my boyfriend, Sam, and with my career I’m not sure where I’m going to end up – maybe America.”

Such vagueness is in contrast to the coherence of her music. The songs have been around for years in various forms. She has spent a lot of time refining them, tweaking them to become the little gems they are. Rumer smiles when it is pointed out to her that people regard her as an overnight sensation. “I’ve been singing for about 10 years, but I’m not surprised when people say they have never heard of me, because that’s just the way it was. I was singing on a small-time basis.”

The pivotal moment arrived a few years ago, she says, when, after seeing her at an open-mic night, the composer Steve Brown (perhaps best known as the band leader Glenn Ponder on Alan Partridge’s

Knowing Me, Knowing You

show) took her under his wing. “I saw this nervous girl and her guitar and feared the worst,” said Brown. “After 10 seconds I was mesmerised.”

“That was a real opportunity,” says Rumer. “When someone comes along and says, ‘I know you work in a shop, and I know you don’t have money, but I will fund your career,’ then you make the most of it. What Steve gave me over three years is incalculable.”

Grateful and grounded. Ready to rocket into 2011. Being hotly tipped all over the place. Thank the Lord, says Rumer, she isn’t 17. “I’m too old to allow all the ‘hotly tipped’ stuff to make a huge difference, or to even get a kick out of it. I’m trying to understand why I have little reaction to what is being written about me. Perhaps it’s self-preservation, being defensive, in that if I buy into the positive then I will also have to buy into the negative.

“So I’m currently walking around in a daze, reading all these wonderful things that are being written about me. Yet I ask myself, who are they talking about?”

Seasons of My Soul

is released through Atlantic Records on Friday

Five female acts to watch out for in 2011

1 Jessica Sparkle Morgan

The 18-year-old has been signed to a record deal by the same A&R bigwig who nabbed Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Adele. Debut album due early next year.

2 Lauren Pritchard

From small-town Tennessee, this UK-based actor and singer has just released her sizzling soul-pop debut,

Wasted In Jackson

. (A word in your ear: her best friend’s mum is Lisa Marie Presley.)

3 Sleep Over

Three young women (or “alpha femmes”, as they term themselves) from Texas who channel Cocteau Twins, Spector-esque girl groups and Suicide.

4 Rebecca Ferguson

The Liverpool-based X Factor entrant is easily the classiest singer in the contest. Amateur hour gets interesting again.

5 Alex Winston

Detroit-born, New York-based Winston is on the cusp of something big with her love of all things British and a high quotient of quirkiness. Expect an album in the first half of next year.