Star rating: **

Airplane passengers allocated the seat in front of Cara Luft should beware. If it's not tea from the former Wailin' Jennys singer-guitarist's travel mug stored overhead dripping on to unsuspecting bonces, there's the danger of attack from cherry tomato seeds that Luft involuntarily splutters into their hairdos.

Luft tells a good mishap story and she has quite a few to tell, but the songs they lead into can often be an anticlimax. This is partly to do with her diction, which can leave something to be desired, and a rather forced vocal style. Perhaps it's her microphone technique, because when she sang the chorus of one of several traditional songs, the Bonnie Light Horseman, off-mike, she conveyed a clarity, warmth and body that was lacking elsewhere.

Then, later, her unaccompanied, unamplified reading of The Blacksmith, even competing with the clamour from an adjoining bar, rang through with a sweetly melodious, storyteller's sensitivity.

All of which is a pity, since Luft could hardly ask for a better accompanist than fellow Canadian Hugh MacMillan, the sort of chap who, as Luft rightly said, can play anything with strings on it. He brought a real frontier authenticity with his slide bouzouki phrases discreetly placed alongside Luft's rendering of the late Willie P Bennett's Sunset Pendulum, and his brilliantly accomplished bass guitar-playing brings shape and presence without ever intruding. He also added guitar to Luft's mandolin on her gospel-styled Down to the River, probably the most convincing song in an evening that had plenty of variety but ultimately proved disappointing.