A REGULAR and always welcome guest, Devon Sproule is one of the most consistently imaginative, lyrical and adventurous singer-songwriters currently recording.

Now reunited with her native Virginia and with a young baby, the newer songs capture some of the complexities and wonder of giving birth.

In lesser hands, You’re So Good would be as syrupy as Calpol, but she has an innate knack of getting through. It is appropriate that Sproule’s new record is called The Gold String, a metaphor for the love-hewn connections that bind us.

It is a very personal, subtle (and with effort) beguiling album that continues her jazz folk stylings. Communicating such a work live takes skill, and here Sproule was ably assisted by bass player Rory Haye, whose choral arrangement of The Tree Detail was a highlight.

Missing clarinet player Chris Cindy, instead support act Baby Copperhead, aka Benjamin Lee, added his banjo into the arrangements. In appearance strikingly similar to a young Tim Buckley, New Yorker Copperhead's cleverly created period sound with spaghetti western and modern effects scored highly for intent and interest. His style of music places great weight on the lyrical content, but here the connections were fewer.

Sproule’s brisk 60-minute set - all new material and no encore - made few concessions for newcomers. It did include You Got Me Singing, a little known Leonard Cohen number that perfectly captures the times we are living through, and in her lovely delivery it highlighted that she is not only a writer (the FT pretentiously called Sproule a "compact folk Bergman"), but an exemplary singer too.