Dust bowl ballads and spooky Appalachian lullabies; Laura Veirs's country-blues deals with the troubles of Bush's America by digging ever deeper into the nation's semi-mythical past, decorating her autumnal narratives with the whiskey-soaked frontier imagery of juke-joints and jail-houses, revealing an almost Mormon-esque distrust of the modern world.

Emerging from the post-grunge scene of the late-1990s Pacific Northwest, Veirs was well placed to observe Seattle's Microsoft/Starbucks boom era, as well as the subsequent demonisation of the city by the anti-globalisation movement. However, if you're hoping for dot.com blues, you're outta luck. Veirs is no journalistic protest singer.

Instead she conjures the older, impressionistic spirit of Walt Whitman, gazing in awe at God's own country, singing of old-west Americana in a wonderful, cracked, almost childlike voice which emphasises the deliberately simplistic song structures.

If you detect a smell like Seattle spirit anywhere it is second hand; Nirvana, Pearl Jam et al were all big Neil Young fans, and Veirs' band, The Tortured Souls, do a mean Crazy Horse impression. The ugly, over-distorted electric guitar, the stoned, loping rhythm section, the soul-jazz Fender Rhodes piano; yeah, the grizzled sasquatch stomp of Zuma/On The Beach period Young was revisited a number of times this evening, and I've rarely heard it done better.

Rock'n'roll aside, Veirs drew from every form of classical American music, carefully piecing together a colourful patchwork of delta blues, backwoods bluegrass and early jazz.

It's ageless, almost ghostly. Supernaturally good.

Updated: 10:49 Friday, March 04, 2005