Beth Rowley is the new retro-chanteuse on the block. Hot on the heels of hits by Duffy and Adele, her debut album, Little Dreamer, entered the chart at No 6 the other day, and, after several years of hard graft, the 26-year-old from Bristol has found herself in the right place at the right time. She certainly made all the approved moves at Dingwalls, and you could just imagine her listening, as she does, to old hits on a portable vinyl record player before the show.

On stage a glass of wine, a decanter and a little vase of flowers were placed on an occasional table next to her microphone stand. When she appeared she had the slightly bashful air of a performer who has yet to be fully convinced of her own star appeal.

But her voice sounded great as she started with a couple of her own songs, the soulful Sweet Hours and a jaunty So Sublime. Her backing band had a faux-Americana sound and look, all twanging guitars, heavy stubble and hats, the one original touch being the drummer Phil Wilkinson’s eccentric use of a miked-up suitcase instead of a floor tom.

While she sang beautifully, Rowley didn’t always inhabit the songs, several of which were cover versions. The sense of desolation in Etta James’s I’d Rather Go Blind was a bit beyond Rowley’s range, and Dylan’s I Shall Be Released was a similarly ambitious choice.

But Rowley made a better fist of Willie Nelson’s song Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground and her version of the British blues-man Jim Crawford’s When the Rains Came was definitive, a beguiling mixture of gospel, blues and country influences of which Emmylou Harris would have been proud.

Milton Keynes, June 19 2008 (01908 280800)

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