FOR a moment between songs, Jess Gardham sounds a little nervous. But when she starts playing those songs, you realise she doesn’t need to be.

As soon as she plucks her guitar into life, she displays all the confidence of knowing she’s born to be performing.

Having started out as a solo acoustic troubadour, York-born Gardham has beefed up her music by assembling a backing band to add more muscle to her tales of defiance and optimism.

There are echoes of the likes of KT Tunstall and Tracy Chapman in a mainly upbeat 50-minute set, dominated by the driving soul swagger of songs such as Beyond Belief, Knockin’ On Wood and Followed You Home, while the stomping, strutting, funked-up Lead The Way is reminiscent of Sly Stone.

Above all, it’s the sound of a feelgood singer-songwriter completely in her element and thoroughly enjoying herself.

But it’s when Gardham strips back the sound and lets her voice take over that you get a true window on her talent, even if sadly she is sometimes drowned out in the intimate but confined surroundings. Her smoky, Leona Lewis-like version of Paloma Faith’s Sexy Bitch is the undisputed highlight; a trembling rendition accompanied by nothing more than a sprinkling of keyboard notes, so delicate it sounds like it could fall apart in her hands at any moment.

And even such a well-worn classic as Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry, which Gardham picks as an encore, is made to sound vital by her ability to hold and project a tune.

Given a longer set to allow her music the chance to breathe and stretch, and the inclusion of a few more slower, pared-down tracks, Gardham is unlikely to stay a well-kept secret for much longer. And she deserves the wider attention she seems certain to attract. She loves what she’s doing; now she wants others to feel the same. On this evidence, they soon will.