Star rating: ***

Having reached a level of of both peer and public acclaim for her work in a recording career that has spanned 32 years, it is perhaps understandable that June Tabor may feel entitled to take it easier when it comes to performance. Yet, with a show that is as understated as this, such an approach can come across as complacent - and the end result was a performance that hinted at far more than it actually delivered.

This was unfortunate, as both the opening and closing songs were superb. Tabor has built her career on interpretations, but the readings of Andy Shanks and Jim Russell's The Dancing (a story of bygone nights out at the Adam Smith Hall in Kirkcaldy) and Doc Pomus's Save the Last Dance for Me were peerless, both in terms of vocal delivery and arrangements.

Geographically, her songs and stories took us from the north of Scotland to the deep south of America, the latter providing another high-point in I Love My Love, while historically they covered the sixteenth to 21st centuries. With some belated Burns and a suite of thematically linked songs of soldiers returning from and going to war from different centuries, there was enough to admire - but it was undermined by a detachedness that was exemplified by Tabor's tendency to wander off stage during some languid but uninspiring instrumentals such as To the Edges.

With so many great songs in her boundless repertoire, to offer such a condensed show seems if anything a little mean-spirited - especially because Tabor's voice, the one constant in an uneven show, remains a thing of wonder, as pure and emotive as that of any contemporary British singer.