Karen Mantler has quietly been finding her own orbit, both with the family firm (Mike Mantler is her father and Carla Bley her mother) and as an almost-there-but-not-quite cult figure through her own left of centre songs. It might be argued that she is something of an acquired taste, but in fact she's a taste worth acquiring. From highlighting homeless people in the park (‘They get hungry after dark’), winter time (‘Don't be depressed. One day spring will come’), surviving bereavement (‘Why can't people die in pairs?’) and the Icelandic volcanic ash that shut down air flights (‘That damn volcano, and all that ash, can't fly to London, the plane might crash’) to the pithy title track, they are all delivered in a subtly affecting low-key sort of way. When Henry Kissinger, the American Cold War warmonger, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, satirist Tom Lehrer said it made political satire obsolete and refused to perform again. If Mantler's humour is not quite on the same level, it's nevertheless quirky and her probing insights into the human condition could well find a way of reaching those audiences who like their music a bit off the wall – then she will surely become the cult figure she seems cut out to be.