Gig review: Sarah Jarosz

MAKING her full Scottish debut after an invitation to this year's Transatlantic Sessions, Texan bluegrass prodigy Sarah Jarosz fully delivered on the expectations of her enraptured audience.

The 20-year-old banjo and mandolin virtuoso has a sweet, timeless voice that nevertheless aggressively commands attention, her repertoire encompassing the most dust-encrusted old-time numbers to self-penned tunes that deservedly stand comparison beside them – the beautifully plaintive Tell Me True a case in point.

Two of the standouts of this evening were the haunting, Edgar Allen Poe-inspired mourning ballad Annabelle Lee with its sorrowful lament for doomed lovers and, by some contrast, the Radiohead-redolent, intermittently estranging and comforting, My Muse.

Accompanied by fellow Boston-based student Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Jarosz's youth was to the fore on the flighty, radio-friendly Run Away, her falsetto enlivening what otherwise felt like a moodily commonplace expression of teen angst. Elsewhere though, her distinctive and intuitive songwriting knack revealed itself as surely as her dazzling musicianship – the lyrics of the inquisitively observational Gypsy showcasing an impressive maturity, while Edge of a Dream ached with wistful purity.

She has an ear for a cover too. Bob Dylan's spiritual Ring Them Bells fits easily into her image-dense songbook, while comparisons to her equally prodigious forbear Gillian Welch seem none too far-fetched once you've heard Jarosz's committedly dry, almost deadpan take on the latter's The Devil Had A Hold On Me. After a heartily endorsed encore, she finished with a moving interpretation of the traditional Foreign Lander.