RECORD companies ruthlessly take their axe to pop floss when past its sell-by date, yet musical achievement should not be measured by record sales alone.

Newcastle artist turned singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams, Mercury Music Prize nominee and purveyor of three fine albums of classical English songwriting, was in the grip of a sense of failure and cynicism after third album Old Light Low's low-key sales performance.

First, God forbid, she contemplated quitting, but since then she has been reinvigorated by recording an album of cover versions, so often the last resort of the washed-up pop act but here an affirmation of her love of song craft. No wonder she sang Tim Hardin's How Can We Hang On To A Dream with such feeling last night.

In conversation after her wonderful, warm-hearted show, she referred to these songs as her "foster children". The more she performs them, and she played ten here from the songbooks of Lou Reed, Mae West, Leonard Cohen and Ivor Cutler, the more they become her own, nestling alongside her own ruminations on the discarded and cherished, the lovelorn and the loved out.

She is accompanied by regular compadres Laura Reid, on autumnal cello and occasional keyboards, and big David Scott, on a soft pillow of acoustic guitars, but whereas they are seated there is one striking sign of Kathryn's swelling confidence. She now stands, where before she would sit, protecting herself behind a veil of earthy wit (the veil has gone but the wit remains).

Good to report too that among her own compositions were two new pieces of lingering longing, Hollow and, better still, Sustain Pedal. Kathryn's wheel of fortune is on the upturn once more.

Updated: 09:31 Friday, June 11, 2004