Gig review: Arlo Guthrie

GIVEN his first guitar by his father aged six, Woody Guthrie's eldest son has nonetheless enjoyed a 43-year career at least half-way out from under that massive paternal shadow. As for the rest, he's happily embraced the legacy, with his set here including both Guthrie Snr classics like Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) – delivered with moving understatement, and as telling as ever in its tale of Mexican labourers' lives held cheap – and newer settings of latterly discovered lyrics.

The now 63-year-old Guthrie Jnr seemed generally little concerned with evading charges of nostalgia, featuring such early album tracks as the acid-fuelled Highway in the Wind and the dream-inspired, Dylanesque Darkest Hour, along with folk and blues standards learned first-hand from the likes of Leadbelly, Sonny Terry and Pete Seeger, among them a wonderfully gravelly, atmospheric version of St James Infirmary.

There were also plenty of anecdotes from those salad days, including an account of his famously out-of-it Woodstock appearance, by way of introduction to Coming Into Los Angeles (aka Mr Customs Man), albeit that the song itself highlighted the somewhat facile, generic nature of his lazier lyrics.

While Guthrie performs entirely solo on his current tour – after 18 months on the road with his four children and seven grandchildren – the intimacy of the format was slightly undermined by a whiff of autopilot glibness; a sense that his folksy delivery and demeanour were just a fraction over-rehearsed, which recalled his background as an actor.

SUE WILSON