In the Sixties Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson were both lynchpins of the English folk scene and the models for every comedy send-up it has received since.

They were responsible for the itchy patterned jumpers, the vocal harmonising around the fire and the songs about a-wassailing.

So it is fitting that their daughter, Eliza Carthy, should have been the one to trendify folk's image for the 21st Century.

The youngest recording artist in the Waterson-Carthy clan, this Yorkshire lass may have an archival passion for the genre and live in a tumbledown farmhouse but she also sports trainers, facial piercings, a new hair colour with every season, and has a soft spot for pop music from Wham! through to Lemon Jelly.

And at 29, having received numerous awards and collaborated with everyone from Nitin Sawnhey to Elvis Costello, she's already secure in her role as the premier interpreter of English song.

A first-rate fiddler with a dark, chocolatey voice to match her mother's, Carthy made her first recorded performance at the age of 12, and her first full recording, with Nancy Kerr, in 1993.

In the sleeve notes she was credited variously with playing a "bottle of 1998 Pinot Noir, fiddle back and Munchkin noises", doing little to dispel the recorded-in-a-garden-shed associations of her surname.

But 1998 changed all that with the release of her defining double album, Red Rice, which married trad with trip hop and fiddles with electronic programming.

Bringing reggae, jazz and drum 'n' bass arrangements to ancient English folk songs, it was a package which appealed to both crusties and clubbers and it secured her a spot on the Glastonbury main stage.

"The reality of the folk scene is that it is diverse and difficult to pin down," says Carthy. "But it has changed a lot. When I started out, I was singing in the backrooms of pubs, playing to the converted. Now I'm getting on to the stages which everyone gets to see."

Having followed Red Rice's success with the "dirty pop" record Angels And Cigarettes, a major label release which fitted traditional tunes to lyrics such as "I've given blow jobs on couches / to men who didn't want me any more", in 2002 Carthy turned to the less soul-bearing subjects of love, death and sailing ships. The result, the award-winning Anglicana, she described as "an expression of Englishness as I feel it".

Carthy and her band The Ratcatchers are at the Komedia as part of a co-headline tour with Sharon Shannon.

County Clare's premier guardian of the reel and the jig, Shannon has been described, apparently with a straight face, as "the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion".

Starts 8pm, Tickets £16, Tel 01273 647100