Heidi Talbot, Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, April 17 (From The Argus)

Heidi Talbot, Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham, April 17

9:19am Thursday 21st April 2011 in Music Reviews By Mark Dishman

After a hellish trip down what little of the M1 remained open, Heidi Talbot and her band suffered the further calamity of a missing support act. “We’re now supporting ourselves,” she explained.

Together with the multi-instrumentalist John McCusker and guitarist Ian Carr, she did the job adroitly. The trio performed a set of songs largely composed by songwriters on the folk scene, with a few traditional numbers.

Talbot’s voice is a sweet but fragile thing, gently nuanced by her Irish accent. But it was necessary to concentrate hard to appreciate its subtleties, and it was a pity she didn’t show off its power more, as she did during a funky version of Sally Brown.

But Talbot’s timidity is perhaps part of her charm, and it worked best on the group’s softer songs, such as versions of Tom Waits’s Time and Sandy Denny’s beautiful At The End Of The Day.

Elsewhere, McCusker and Carr entertained with their own tunes as Talbot was in form on The Shepherd Lad, a confusing, amusing tale of bargaining, nudity and deceit. The audience, charmed by the warm atmosphere on stage, joined in the encore of The Cherokee Rose.

It was a cheerful end to a thoroughly pleasant, if not thrilling, evening of music.