Siobhan Long heard Mary McPartlan in The Cobblestone, while Davin O'Dwer was at the Jamiroquai gig in The Point, Dublin.The Cobblestone, Dublin

Mary McPartlan
The Cobblestone, Dublin
Siobhan Long

There are voices that alight gently on songs, engaging in a fleeting coupling and then departing for pastures new. And there are voices that not only get deep beneath the skin of a song, but take long-term possession of it so that it becomes all their own. Mary McPartlan has been mining the full breadth and depth of her voice for some time, but Thursday night's gig was proof positive that she's finally found the epicentre of what was always a primal force within.

Having sent ripples through the world of Irish and English folk and contemporary singing with the release of her first album, The Holland Handkerchief in 2003, McPartlan has proceeded to lure a hearty band of acolytes in her wake, by stealth. She's grown into her repertoire gradually, tackling songs as diverse as Lovely Sailor Boy (once in the sole ownership of Delia Murphy, despite its traditional provenance), American old time epic, Aura Lee (investing it with a hearty gumption that casts an entirely different hue across its path) and the quintessentially traditional The Tide Full In, with equal ease.

There's an earthy quality to McPartlan's singing that's no respecter of the effete or the lacklustre. Her belly-deep voice aches with a wealth of living, its boundaries defined by her emotional investment in the music, rather than by anything as pedestrian as range. With supreme multi-instrumentalist Shamie O'Dowd accompanying her on guitar, fiddle, harmonica and vocals, and keyboardist, Eddie Lynch lending some distinct jazz-tinged flourishes, McPartlan inhabits a landscape where her brushstrokes could roam wide and free, confident that her musicians could both lead and follow her wherever she chose to ramble.

Having built a fiery momentum from the opening cords of The High Walls Of Derry, the trio ricocheted through Guy Clark and Tim O'Brien's John Riley and then boldly reinvented what had become a funereal chant, The Grey Funnel Line, investing it with a vigour and purpose it had long lost in the hands of others.

While there are few musicians who could match Shamie O'Dowd's musical inventiveness, at times he strayed too far from the spirit of McPartlan's repertoire, his multiple musical identities serving to confuse rather than embellish the night's set pieces. Still, his accompaniment on the pristine closer, Shane MacGowan's magnificent A Rainy Night In Soho caught the essence of the song so perfectly that he had licence to stray near and far, just as long as it posed a challenge to stretch and bend the notes in entirely new shapes.

This was a comeback concert with few of the frills but all of the passion that befits such an occasion. Now that McPartlan is back on the road, she'd do well to set her compass, pack her knapsack and take her very fine music to the furthest corners where appetites are keen and ears keener still.

Jamiroquai
The Point, Dublin
By Davin O'Dwer

"I was reading The Irish Times today," Jay Kay from Jamiroquai offers halfway through his gig at the Point, "and you can't get shit for less than 500 grand here." Just as we thought some particularly wily newsagent had extracted the maximum from the notoriously profligate Ferrari-driving master of funk, we realise he was reading the Property supplement. All the same, when Jay Kay is complaining about real-estate prices, you know the market is way out of control. Which can't be said for Jamiroquai's music, which is so controlled it sounds like somebody is playing all his CDs through a really huge set of speakers. There's always been something too smooth about the funky cat-with-the-hat act, the ecologically concerned Space Cowboy with a fleet of fast cars and nifty feet. The music is similarly a well-worn formula with minimal variations. Some of the musicians probably dash out the same funky licks all evening and nobody is any the wiser.

The fact that Jay Kay himself is prancing around in a suitably extravagant hat seems to make nary a difference - the atmosphere for the first hour is flat. With a mostly anonymous backing band unable to take any attention away from the little guy with the big voice, his native-American-gone-metal head dress threatens to steal the show. But the theatrics can only stretch so far, and it isn't until old favourites such as Virtual Insanity and Alright - from the Travelling Without Moving album - are belted out that the crowd start to respond like they're at a concert rather than a Jamiroquai-themed nightclub.

From there, the showmanship from Jay Kay and the gang is a perfectly serviceable example of funky goodness, with plenty of "We love you, Dublin" ould palaver and waving of the tricolour. It's hard to get too worked up about it all, but it's also hard not to dance like it's 1978. It would have been nice to see a few more hats though.