Currently on a 32county Irish tour, Belfast's half-Antrim/half-Down status obviously warranted two dates: this one at the Waterfront's impressively packed lesser auditorium, and another on April 12th at the rather grungier Empire Music Hall. Turner's popularity justifies the bookings, but each venue's likely appeal to a slightly different range of punters - Woman's Heart-loving couples to pseudo-bohemian twentysomethings - is an interesting aspect, underlined in Turner's presentation of herself and her art.

Known to the masses through jaunty radio songs like Take The Money And Run (played twice tonight), Turner is also a very intelligent, self-aware writer who probably covets a significance that was attainable for the singer-songwriter in the Dylan era but may never, in this post-everything society, be again. Janis Ian seems a good analogue, not only as both writers can weld beautiful and memorable melodies to pointed lyrics (and stage personalities equal parts self-deprecation and braggadocio), but also in the forwardness of both in using supposedly non-conventional attractiveness as a wellspring for inspiration.

Ian's At Seventeen however, strikes its chord more truly than Turner's Queen Of Canal Street - a dense discourse on transvestism which came, on this occasion, with an even denser introduction. Uncomfortable mutterings from the rows behind may be replaced by right-on applause at the Empire. Yet overall Turner has come on leaps and bounds in that delicate balance of entertaining and informing, and her touring band - Nick Scott, Ger Kelly and Ray Sheay - is simply fabulous.