Tripod, Dublin

Chan Marshall arrives on these shores with a reputation for eccentricity. Her last visit to Ireland saw her appearing somewhat, er, ‘refreshed’ on stage, having stand up rows with members of the audience and, in Galway, letting a stray dog loose into the crowd.

Those days of wildly unpredictable stage antics are now a thing of the past, a reputedly sober Marshall fronting the Dirty Delta Blues Band, a group of soul-blues sessioneers. But true to form, she still refuses to dish up the safe and the expected.

The first surprise is that she doesn’t go near a piano all evening, preferring instead to slink about the stage seductively. Then there’s the band – clearly no strangers to an elongated funky jam or two, they turn almost every song into a blues workout, which is only of occasional benefit. Songs like ‘Could We’ and the closing ‘Lived In Bars’ are well suited to this new looser, guitar lick-heavy approach; others, like ‘Living Proof’, ‘Willie’ and ‘The Greatest’, less so

The other problem with the band is that they’re far too freakin’ loud, swamping Marshall’s beautiful, breathy voice, which is maddeningly low in the mix. It’s infuriating – that voice, after all, is the reason we’re here. On the occasions it does rise above the guitars, it’s spine-tingling.

The set is heavy on covers and, again, these seem a bit hit and miss. Gnarls Barkely’s ‘Crazy’ and ‘Dark End Of The Street’ are excellent – but ‘New York, New York’ and a poor ‘Tracks Of My Tears’ seem fairly redundant.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that, despite moments of greatness, after a solid hour and a half of soul-blues jamming the whole affair seemed to meander a little bit. Being slightly bored at a Cat Power gig – now that really was unexpected.

Words_Neill Dougan