BETH Rowley is on the cusp of releasing her first recording since 2008’s Brit-nominated debut album.

It took guitarist Pedro to mention it, but an EP will be out “soon”, the first of three that will then form her new album, released independently, whereas Little Dreamer had all the clout of Universal Music’s Classics and Jazz promotion.

Convention would have it that Beth would surely dominate her set with the new material, but Beth doesn’t do conventional.

She’s changed agent again, and apparently her new one didn’t even know about this Pocklington show – her fourth visit to one of her favourite provincial haunts – and she met bassist Rupert only two days earlier.

She was yet to familiarise herself with his surname – “Turner”, he said, quietly – and he was yet to familiarise himself with all her songs. Hence the short set that did not include Brother, one of two new songs that Beth has written with “an awesome Canadian singer-songwriter called Ron Sexsmith”. Once Rupert has learnt it, no doubt it will be a highlight.

“This will be the last one,” said Beth, introducing only her eighth song, before quickly deciding that she better play a couple more.

And yet you could forgive her everything – not arriving to start the sound-check until 12 minutes before support act Dan Webster was due on stage; doing no encore; being top heavy on covers from Dylan to Willie Nelson to Captain Beefheart – when she stands before you with her angel curls and sings.

Blues and soul – American in phrasing but English in poignancy – are her forte and what she has done in four years, aside from moving from Bristol to London, is strip away Little Dreamer’s pop frippery.

Tellingly, she jettisoned all her own compositions from that album in Thursday’s show in favour of retro purity, her lonesome mouth harp and all. Better still, the other Sexsmith co-write, Forest Fire, Princess and Something Like Harvest melt like butter, affirming she has found the new songs to better match that wondrous melancholic voice.