"Blonde, beautiful, articulate and gifted, Gabrielle Louise clearly has her wacky side as well. Witness her adulation of Jonathan Safran Foer's trippy fiction. Doesn't seem to fit the profile of a singer-songwriter who probes so seriously into the nature of love, or dedicates herself so passionately to environmental causes...

But in Foer's fiction, she in fact finds common ground with the human experience, and inspiration ensues.

"He's my favorite writer, absolutely," she says assertively of Foer during a phone interview from her home in Denver, CO. "He has you crying and laughing and howling all in several chapters; the range of emotions he takes you through is incredible. I notice a direct correlation between the time I spend reading and the time I spend writing...And I would say that my music is undoubtedly inspired by that--if I'm reading a book, I'm writing songs. It just works that way.

"I also really enjoy reading a lot of poetry. Recently when I've been on the road it's been fun to pick up old poetry books from bookstores around the United States, so I've been getting back to the classics and reading some Walt Whitman and Dickenson, whatever I can pick up in an old copy that looks like it's falling apart. That's a plus."

This is valuable knowledge to have at hand when speaking to Ms. Louise, now 23, especially after hearing her most recent album, the Gene Libbea-produced Cigarettes for Sentiments, on her own label. In contrast to her first album, Journey, featuring her songs in a multitude of settings that reflected not only her own musical background but that of the diverse cultures represented by her backing musicians, Cigarettes for Sentiments is the artist fans hear when they see her live. It's stripped down, mostly just her voice, her guitar, and a bass...Quiet is the predominant mood; so much so that it forces a listener's focus onto the writing, the lyrics, the storytelling. This is an artist who comes to music from a literary vantagepoint, first and foremost.

But the lyrics standing alone are only part of the story...As a vocalist Gabrielle Louise dives deep into her songs, exploring them in a warm, sturdy voice reminiscent at times of Joni Mitchell...especially in the falsetto flights and lower register swoops...She executes a captivating balance of heartache and resolve."