Katy J Pearson @ Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 20 Sep

Spang Sisters open up the evening, managing to answer the oft-asked question: what if Noah and the Whale got really into 10cc? There's a lot to admire in the group's anything-goes style, now expanded to a six-piece including violin and cello. The jaunty soul-pop is a little too slick at times, but the violin is a welcome addition and the twee subject matter just about falls on the right side of the sweet/cloying divide.

Katy J Pearson immediately gets into the groove with a couple of older songs (by her standards) from 2020's Return. The slightly more twangified, folk sound is mostly absent tonight as the more full, bombastic vibe of Sound of the Morning is front and centre. Despite a tickly cough, Pearson's vocals are superb, hitting the high notes without being shrill and still perfectly intelligible amid the measured, but fairly loud arrangements. It's all uniformly smooth without necessarily jumping out, so the cover of Willow's Song (made famous via The Wicker Man) is a nice change of pace that feels different but still of a piece thanks to Pearson's versatile vocals.

Moving into the final stretch, the power of the songwriting really comes to the fore. Fix Me Up is probably the most upbeat, poppy moment of the night (ironically rejected by Pearson's major label years back) that shows a keen ear for hooks. This is followed by main set closer, Talk Over Town. Something of a breakout hit for Pearson, it's that perfect mix of low-key storytelling that the first wave of Scottish indie acts excelled at (The Blue Nile, Aztec Camera etc), along with the easygoing melodies of classic pop and new wave acts (and Freddy Wordsworth's killer trumpet).

A solo performance of Return opens the encore, the only song of the night that fits the Americana brush that Pearson used to be tarred with, but it's a lovely quiet moment before an excellent cover of The B-52s' late-era hit Roam closes the night on a buoyant, danceable note. There are no fireworks tonight and, along with a crowd that are into it but not wild, things don't really hit the highs that Pearson is capable of. But as a “standard” show, the standard is still very high.