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Jess Williamson review – silken-voiced singer embraces new upbeat worldview

Alone on the stage with her guitar and iPhone drums, the US singer traverses country, folk and pop with a rich voice that sneers, flutters and soars

She’s dressed like a hipster who stumbled across the Little House on the Prairie and is performing alone tonight, just a woman with her guitar – and, at certain points, an iPhone playing the tinny beats that she used as demo drumlines that became an integral part of her most recent album. That album is Time Ain’t Accidental, her fifth solo record and the first to embrace a more upbeat worldview, as opposed to earlier work that was perpetually close to tears. On God in Everything it has the jarring effect of a cool Christian beat combo doing a school assembly, but on Time Ain’t Accidental they are almost essential – her best and most loved-up song, it fizzes around the room like a kicked-over firework before she retreats back into quiet to end the set.

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