(Vertigo) ****

HERE is a prediction. Come early next year, Amy Macdonald will be BRIT nominated for best newcomer and female singer in a rise to match fellow breakthrough Scots K T Tunstall and Paolo Nutini.

Probably she will have four hit singles by then too, culminating in a re-issue of May's limited-edition debut Poison Prince.

The 19-year-old Glaswegian has been the subject of a "slow-burning campaign".

The Press has received more promotional campaign copies of her debut album than any other record this year, beginning with a five-track sampler that has been prominently displayed on the sales counter at Borders too.

There have been festival appearances at Glastonbury, T In The Park and more to come, plus BBC Radio 2 patronage, and the drip-drip effect is paying off with second single and album opener Mr Rock'n'Roll rising to Number 12 in the charts on Sunday.

Macdonald taught herself guitar at 12, made dozens of demos in her bedroom and within months of signing to major label Vertigo, here comes This Is The Life, out next Monday and as fully rounded a pop debut as the much older Tunstall's ubiquitous Eye To The Telescope.

Producer Pete Wilkinson and mixer-to-the-stars Bob Clearmountain add commercial lustre and variety to the staple guitar, but not obtrusively so, with a mariachi band on Let's Start A Band, John Barry-style strings to open the Posh-baiting Footballer's Wife, horns and pub piano for Barrowland And Ballroom, and a bagpipes fade-out to the hidden extra track, the Scottish lament Caledonia.

Macdonald's songs burst with impetuous teenage life, typified by Run and A Wish For Something More, but with a waspish cynicism beyond her years too, first heard in Poison Prince and later in the stand-out Youth Of Today and the scathing LA.

Her voice is deep and surging, like Melanie, Dolores O'Riordan or the aforementioned K T rather than the pretty blancmange of a Dido or Katie Melua, and soon there will be no escaping it.