Grainne Duffy

This is a good time for Grainne Duffy ([pronounced Gron-yer) to be releasing her second album: If she has the chops to cut it. Singers like Adele and Amy Winehouse have put the raunch back in to female vocals and with Joanne Shaw Taylor and the incredible Beth Hart riding high this is a perfect opportunity for a young girl from Castleblaney to move out and make a name for herself.

Actually, she is excellent. Warm vocals with a soulful tone and real depth and emotion. She is a very tasty songwriter as well - 10 of these are self-penned - and capable of the soft and soulful as well as the ballsy hard Blues. She is also a pretty tasty guitarist: not quite the class of Joanne Shaw Taylor but better than many and ably backed up by Paul Sherry on second guitar. The rest of the band are also fine players and I especially enjoyed John McCullough's keyboards giving a real richness to her sound.

I would say that her voice reminds me of a young Elkie Brookes but she has obviously been steeped in Chicago Blues and Memphis soul as well as some countrified Blues and the whole album has the feel of a classic.

I saw her supporting Beth Hart last year and whipping a very partisan audience into a real passion. She has been playing with the likes of Eric Bibb, Suzanne Vega and Joan Baez and sounds as though she has learnt from some of the best but in the end it is all her own work - a real star in the making.