Beautiful, impassive in performance and possessing a darkly lugubrious, emotive voice, Dominique Noiret is the focal point of She Said!, Brighton's startlingly authentic-sounding rockabilly/country outfit.

The vast, ever-bubbling melting pot of the city's musical talent has produced some exceptional groups over the past few years, but none seems to have arrived as fully-formed as Noiret and company.

While Noiret's romantic spirit seems to haunt a lost era - a time of brylcreemed quiffs, fintail Cadillacs, dusty highways and drive-ins - there was real immediacy to her singing, which was perfectly accompanied by the upright bass, scything guitar twangs and brushed, skiffling percussion of her band. But despite the excellent musicianship of her colleagues, the capacity crowd's attention was inexorably drawn by the gravitational pull of the singer's onstage presence.

Dressed all in black and gripping an acoustic guitar with her name roughly scrawled across its body, Noiret stood before the Fifties-style cage microphone with eyes of deep sadness. Her intense gaze took in everyone but focused on nothing, fixed instead on the eternal images of her songs'

themes: Loss, betrayal, unrequited love and heartbreak.

"Sweet revenge is true," she sang on one of her most brilliantly-titled vignettes of cruel desire, The Texas Chainstore Manicure.

Inevitably the victim of lovers who have turned to the dark side or the bottle, Noiret's persona is one of inner strength and perseverance - qualities she and her band must require as they wait for their debut album, recorded last year, to be released.

Meanwhile She Said! remain something of a quiet phenomenon, bringing more class to a classic sound than most 21st Century audiences have a right to expect.