Review

She might peddle every cliché in country, but, writes Siobhan Long, Dolly Parton's live performances leave most of her opposition for dead.

Dolly Parton at The Point

She might peddle every cliché in country, she may trill in high C's and croon of lonesome nights in the Smoky Mountains, but Dolly Parton's live performances leave most of her opposition for dead. From her spectacular entrance (worthy of the Grand Ol' Opry rather than the cavernous vacuum of The Point), bejewelled in rhinestones and crowned with a magnificent gravity-defying wig, Parton wooed the assembled with the panache of a performer long versed in the intricacies of crowd control.

From the opening strains of Little By Little to the Smoky Mountain DNA of My Tennessee Mountain Home, she painted a picture so vivid, and so picaresque of a life well-lived that we found ourselves furtively envious of her poverty-stricken past amid the moonshine and the banjo-strewn front porches of east Tennessee.

That voice is as fragile, as beautiful and as utterly heart-stopping as it was thirty-something years ago when Parton made her first foray into the recording studio. And unlike most of her contemporaries who succumbed to the scalpel (Cher, Tammy Wynette) but denied it, Parton glories in the wonders of modern surgery. As far as she's concerned, she may be nipped, tucked and sucked, but the music's still as edgy as it ever was.

Parton's canny embrace of bluegrass in recent years has rejuvenated her career and introduced her to a whole new audience. Her natural storytelling skills spellbound the crowd, on the down-home shotgun shack tale of Apple Jack and the heartbreak motel room yarn that is Dagger Through The Heart. Her articulate re-telling of workplace politics, 9 to 5, was prescient in the way it highlighted the perils of the glass ceiling, while Jolene (delivered with the delicious satisfaction of a wronged woman made good) captured the terrors of infidelity with rare honesty.

She may joke about it being "hick hop", but when Ms Parton, joined by three of her band, embarked on an a capella medley that swung from Islands In The Stream to He'll Come Again, there was no doubting the woman's matchless vocals or indeed, her incandescent wit. She can tell stories as well as Woody Guthrie, sing as angelically or demonically as she pleases . . . and one more thing: she could teach all those divas a thing or two about power balladry. Hell, she can even take on Robert Plant and Jimmy Page with her take on Stairway To Heaven (although some might question the wisdom of a delivery that lacks a muscular electric guitar). Eclectic, wilful, incorrigible: an undoubted elixir for the soul.

Siobhan Long