Star rating: **** Mary Gauthier's opening gambit is: "If you're feeling good, hold on to it. Here comes the bruising." So we knew we were in for an evening of reassuringly miserable pleasure.

Star rating: ****

Mary Gauthier's opening gambit is: "If you're feeling good, hold on to it. Here comes the bruising." So we knew we were in for an evening of reassuringly miserable pleasure.

After swaggering on to the stage, Gauthier looks every inch the dude. With a well-documented troubled past, she is sardonic about the downbeat nature of her songs. Her trick is to fill her well-crafted tales with ironic humour. Combine that with subtle political comment and you can hear she is keeping the folk tradition alive.

Imbued with the spirit of Johnny Cash, as lyrically sharp as Dylan and with a voice that can fluctuate between a rasp and a whisper, she very quickly sucks you into her world of hobos, alcoholics and cheap motels Gauthier was accompanied, occasionally, on fiddle, by Texan-born Carrie Rodriguez who, earlier, had treated us to her own set of superb songs.