Tender is the night

THE bane of the sensitive singer-songwriter is the indifferent blabbermouth at the bar. While you're emotionally flaying yourself with six strings and a plectrum, quietly dying a little on stage to try and connect emotionally with your spellbound audience, they're loudly ordering a pint of Belhaven and talking about conflated house prices. It really can ruin everything.

It's a pleasant surprise, then, that the gig-goers of Edinburgh - including a member or two of Mogwai - appear to be an incredibly polite bunch, who respectfully haud their wheesht throughout pretty much the entire performance by Irish singer-songwriter and recent Mercury Prize also-ran Gemma Hayes, confining their rowdi-ness to enthusiastic applause at the appropriate juncture and the odd soft heckle. The rest of the time, they remain in silent, breath-holding anticipation.

It's actually a little bit creepy. But Hayes isn't going to let it freak her out. The Tipperary-born songbird may offer up a public face of knockabout goofiness - stumbling over her between-song banter, getting tangled when changing guitars, nervously adjusting her hair - but there's actually a steely professionalism underneath that ditsy camouflage.

The broken-hearted vignettes and glass-half-empty balladry that made her debut album Night On My Side a surprise Mercury contender is rendered beautifully by her band; especially the drummer, who provides pitch-perfect harmonies to Hayes's vocal line without missing a beat.

But it's her voice that really enchants. Judging by the pop porridge on television, young hopefuls charge themselves with recreating the multi-octave hooting of divas like Mariah and Britney; over-enunciating words, adding strangely grating "yeahs" and, basically, going a bit overboard. There's none of that in Hayes's breathy naturalness and emotional delivery. On the self-flagellating hammock-sway of Ran For Miles, the little melodic ascension at the end of each phrase feels like an aural massage.

It's not all sad-sack songs, though. Hayes proves she can rock out with the woozy, thundering riff of Tear In My Side, while Back Of My Hand sounds more muscular than it does on record (though the keyboard solo threatens to turn into the hook from Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart).

But, ironically, it's when dissecting the dysfunction of relationships that Hayes seems most comfortable. "I can't decide whether the lyrics to this song are incredibly brave or incredibly stupid," she says when introducing a newie. "It's called I Can't Find Love." Like a less-sandpapery version of PJ Harvey, she launches into a heart-melting ballad that has you thinking: jeepers, if this beautiful and talented lass can't find love, what chance do the rest of us have?

As it turns out, she only refers to her recent disappointment in passing. "We lost the Mercury nomination thing," she says, mock- mournfully. "We're all winners!" cries someone un-expectedly, and everyone laughs, before spookily reverting to that rapt expectation mode. We're either all winners or we've been brainwashed by Hayes's hypnotic presence. Either of which is fine.

gemma hayesthe venue, edinburghHHHH

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