"The Vigilante" has landed... in Toronto! I got home late today, and there was the package at my door, a two-pack including "April Rising" from 2004 ("Honey" was out of stock when I ordered - damn!) Now I've been sitting here running through an hour of - without hyperbole - some of the most f*ing amazing music I've ever heard since I don't know when. Usually CDs have one or two tracks going for them. Not here. "Vigilante" and "April" don't waste a beat of music. Every track is an experience, the way that Alanis Morissette or Savage Garden crafted their albums. Listening to the two albums side-by-side for the first time is also a revelation. The spare acoustic piano of the 2004 "Jezebel" evolves to the full orchestration of the 2007 version. The lyrical, balladic beauty of a love song like "Embers" contrasts with the paean to destructive love, "Saliva". I listen to this, and I am both enamoured, as a music lover... and also driven to despair, as a songwriter, that I cannot write anything like this. In poetry, yes, once in a while I've managed to sharpen my knife enough to be able to stab the listener through the heart... but with words and music? "Scissors" is a case in point, in both albums a haunting and horrific ode to obsession: "But you hurt me again so I took my scissors and I cut you out". Although her mastery of the piano (self-taught!) is impressive enough, Ariel S. Lee isn't just another Vanessa Carlton. She's Vanessa Carlton with an ice-pick. To those who have not yet discovered the songs on "Vigilante" or "April Rising", or who have yet to make their acquaintance with Ariel S. Lee: It's time. This is the real thing.