Live music review: Eliza Carthy and The Ratcatchers / The Sharon Shannon Band Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan, March 24th

Even if you are not normally a fan of folk music, Eliza Carthy is still mightily impressive.

She is a funky physical performer: a bundle of hip-swinging energy with electric blue hair, a feisty assertive attitude and a voice that animates everything.

Eliza Carthy is skilled in the art of reinterpretation as she and The Ratcatchers play English folk songs and tunes rescued from the dry dust of historical association. Familiar, yet compellingly novel, Eliza channels the music of much earlier generations with passion and confidence.

For these are songs whose pull remains undiminished and tunes that are remarkably resistant to the tug of time.

From simple heartfelt, timeless tales of love lost or unrequited to multi-character story songs, the music has grown in stature through Eliza, often superlatively beautiful yet with the very contemporary sound that is her trademark.

And all sung in Eliza's genuinely intimate, distinctive style; one minute clear beauty, the next gutsy bellow, underpinned by her remarkable and uncommonly lovely fiddle playing.

There was a perfect flow of musical chemistry too within her band, creating huge multi-layered washes of sound - for three fiddles, a melodeon and a tuba can be surprisingly heavy hitting in their intensity.

But by the time they came to perform Willow Tree, the sore throat, which Eliza was valiantly fighting off, was troubling her, lending a rougher edge to her voice and inadvertently adding some raunch to the set.

By the encore, Cobblers, she was struggling, but her playing was always out of this world.

And even during the inevitable between-song banter, Eliza and her crew deftly avoided the patience-testing black holes that usually accompany folkie performances. An hour in her company whizzed by in no time at all.

Sold out weeks in advance, this was a double headliner, but it was an uneven match. Seated and more static, The Sharon Shannon Band played the type of very traditional Irish music that is unshowy but hard to get out of your head.

Full of jigs and reels, it was one for the purists but a bit lacking in variation.

However, Sharon Shannon is an ace accordion player and after a few tunes the Irish magic began to work its beguiling spell, due in no small part to the fervent and trancelike intensity of Jim Murray's guitar playing and the restrained charms of Mary Shannon on banjo.

But Eliza had the upper hand.

MOLL