Colleen Green & Cassie Ramone @ The Castle, Manchester, 26 Sep

"I'd prefer it if you were all sitting down, honestly." Cassie Ramone wastes little time in making the back room of The Castle her own. Having everybody sit on the floor evokes little other in this correspondent than flashbacks to primary school assembly, but for Ramone, the appeal's obvious: seated with only an acoustic guitar and an effects pedal for company, she's suddenly casting her gaze over the near-capacity crowd, rather than up at it. She rips through tracks from The Time Has Come, her first solo foray post-Vivian Girls, and the format works a treat.

On her own, she has that knack for lackadaisical storytelling that puts you in mind of the likes of Kimya Dawson. It's easy, casual, and engrossing, and on top of that, it's refreshing that she chooses to expand the guitar sound live, and prefers to use effects on her vocals. The scuzzy Vivian Girls template suited her down the ground; it's one thing to abandon it entirely, and another altogether to tweak it in intelligently subtle fashion.

Colleen Green closes the evening out and enforces no such floor-bound restrictions on her audience. Wearing her trademark sunglasses, her set's decidedly electric, a Strat emblazoned with 'HAPPY BIRFDAY JEFF' her primary weapon, although her drum machine pulls its weight too. Green, by way of comparison to Ramone, feels like the songwriter who could probably step up a level with a band behind her: to her credit, her reliance on programmed percussion suggests she's well aware of that. A good job, then, that her witty lyricism and instinctive feel for melodic guitar playing would shine in any environment. This is quite the double bill.