Fionn Regan

It might not rank alongside Bob Dylan going electric – the humid cavern of Jam is a long way from the Newport Folk Festival and Fionn Regan isn’t a household folk institution just yet - but it’s to some surprise tonight that Regan’s one-man show is reinforced by a bluesy rock ‘n’ roll band, its members boasting all the unruly decibels that riled folk music back in 1965.

The breezy attitude of tonight’s performance is met with rousing approval though, with not a mention of "Judas" in earshot. Drawing from the canon of great American rock, Regan is as content with Highway 61 Revisited-era Bob Dylan as he is with the morbid barroom blues of Tom Waits and the jailhouse country of Johnny Cash. In this mode the enigmatic Irishman has all the swagger of a Ryan Adams circa-Heartbreaker – with no signs of the gratuitous prolificacy that has blighted Adams’ career ever since.

This American route feels natural enough for Regan, and certainly fits with new US label Lost Highway, which he shares with Adams, Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson and the Jayhawks. The eyeball-oddness captured in the iconic ‘Be Good or Be Gone’ video has been replaced with a roguish confidence, the new material reframing some classic rock ‘n’ roll themes, redemption, God and the devil among them. His robust and tight band has depth of character reminiscent of Dylan’s sometime backing musicians, The Band.

Regan’s songwriting craft remains sharply in focus, his reams of wordplay and absurdisms fitting the good-humoured bluster of ‘Protection Racket’: “A little birdie told me you've been siphoning the poor box / I heard the knitting circle discussing chubb locks”. With no incongruity between old and new songs, the best of End of History is refreshed with the variety of material. The ever-disarming ‘The Underground Typewriter’ is intelligently foregrounded by an opening pair of rackety numbers; while the fingerpicked temper of ‘Hunter’s Map’ carries all the moody chill of its lyric.

The route from hushed folk to scratchy rock might well-travelled, but outside a few folk purists and dinner party listeners this new dimension only heightens the anticipation for forthcoming album The Shadow Of An Empire.