While Ellie Goulding’s debut album Lights has been out (and found considerable success) in her native UK for over a year, it’s only recently hit the US along with the singer herself, who has continued building upon a dedicated fan base that has been eager to hear more. Through a series of appearances – from the talk show circuit to the undeniably more high-profile Saturday Night Live alongside host Tina Fey earlier this month – and her first stateside tour, the 24-year-old is finally beginning to get the attention she deserves on this side of the pond.

Lights is a rather straightforward release but by no means a simple one. Undeniably pop but tinged with contemporary folk, the record details Goulding’s experiences as she navigates a string of relationships which are recounted mostly without metaphor and instead with a rather refreshing candor that’s almost conversational in nature. Longing, regret, confusion, love – all of these are present in abundance and sung with conviction in her unique, warbling voice which veers towards the higher register, creating an ethereal effect which is extremely charming.

The tracks themselves vary, from ballads like ‘The Writer’ and ‘Your Song’ (a cover of the Elton John classic which she performed at the royal wedding last month) to dancier, synth-laden tracks like ‘Starry Eyed’ and ‘Wish I Stayed’, the latter of which Goulding has revealed as the first song she ever wrote during her short spell at the University of Kent a few years back. The underlying current of Goulding’s singer-songwriter past remains present throughout the album and still manages to find space to breathe alongside producer Starsmith’s sometimes heavy musical layering.

Lyrically, Lights avoids tricky or overly clever imagery, instead relying upon an honesty that borders on naïvety in only the way youth allows. In ‘Wish I Stayed’, Goulding laments her struggle to find her place in the big city (“Why can’t we speak another language, one we all agree on? / When men look outside, they see houses instead of the fields they grew from”), echoing a sentiment that anyone who has left behind their small town upbringing can relate to. In ‘Every Time You Go’, the story of an unsatisfying end to an intense love affair is relayed in all its painful glory (“Now I’m tired of trying to keep you, all I want to do is sleep / And maybe when I’m sleeping, you’ll get back on your feet”) while ‘Lights’ – Goulding’s first US single – serves as a simple expression of the desire we’ve all had to escape back to another place in our lives in which we were happy and things were a lot less complicated.

Lights is by no means a groundbreaking album, but what makes it special is that it doesn’t try to be. Goulding’s strengths are not so much in creating sounds which have never been heard before as they are in building narratives that are not only cohesive when played in sequence but which hit startlingly close to home in a way that is undeniably comforting. At the same time, it lacks the self-consciousness that could typically make such a record tiresome and contrived, leaving listeners engaged, content and ultimately curious to see what she’ll come up with next.

Jennifer Still has an overwhelming fondness for pizza, afternoon naps and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. She rarely changes out of pyjamas during the weekdays. Or the weekends. She writes at stilljennifer.com and tweets at @jenniferlstill