I guess I hear the girl inside the woman on this record. The way Sally Seltmann, alias New Buffalo, is in a state of sweet mourning for who she was and who she loves. Which makes Somewhere, anywhere. a song cycle of sorts about growing up.Parallels with Beth Orton are obvious (Orton actually sang backing vocals for New Buffalo on her first CD The Last Beautiful Day), as is the jazzy bounce of Feist on ‘It’s Got to Be Jean’ - but there’s more to the Australian performer New Buffalo than that. Songs like ‘Stay With Us’, about how “you wish you were a man, but you’re walking, softly slowly, with a bun in the oven” seem self-addressed. Someone’s pregnant, someone’s sad. Will they keep the child? It’s the kind of question (implied not stated) that gives the youthfulness in Seltmann’s voice an inevitable ring of hope and loss.The aforementioned ‘It’s Got to Be Jean’ adds to the child-at-play side of the record, a water-colour of a song enhanced by clarinet and flute. ‘I’m the Drunk and You’re the Star’ is the shadow side, but it avoids bitterness because of Seltmann’s raindrop piano, which puts all the focus on longing rather than hard core truth telling. Cat Power should try this song on for size.Across the record there are other mentions of what seems like the same boy, far away at the end of a phone line, hurt and depressed, unable to help. Overall this night of the soul should therefore be a downer, but Seltmann makes it feel joyfully resigned, like a late night walk home alone, a may-as-well-skip-as-cry feeling.Somewhere, anywhere. (the full stop in the title seems to be important) was recorded in her home studio, a shed somewhere off the Great Ocean Road outside Melbourne in Victoria. The dominant instrument apart from Seltmann’s voice is an old piano that has been in her family for over a hundred years. At her touch it gives off a tidal, starry sound across these songs that finally suggests you can be haunted and comforted at once.