AN INVETERATE traveller and songwriter, Devon Sproule is not one to stay still.

Raised in Tennessee, recently of Berlin and now Austin, she is also not one to give her loyal UK audience an easy time. It would have been easy to have remained confined in her early folk and country trappings; her lovely strong voice could have made her a commercial proposition.

Yet she has that restless itch; so she was performing on Wednesday with a band from her Tin Angel record label; including the wonderful Joe Carvell on bass, who also performed with her at her York house concert in 2011.

The music is now somewhere in the jazz realm where she appears artistically becalmed following her great leap forward with I Love You, Go Easy; one of the best records of the decade. The two standouts were both from that record, Unmarked Animals and Now’s The Time.

Performing mostly as a trio, the bass playing was superb, quietly propulsive and lithe, whereas the drumming felt rather stiff and lacked swing. Sproule was on good form, although the set contained too many numbers from her rather watery, indistinct Colours album from 2012. Opener John Southworth was certainly an acquired taste, a Canadian so far into left field as to be almost out of sight.

New songs premiered varied in quality, but suggest Colours 2 will be an improvement. Her lyrics were consistently interesting; impressionistic certainly, but vivid and unusual and her most startling asset. A talent that is certainly going places.