Rodney Crowell and Iris Dement

Perth Concert Hall JJJJ

Last year, when ill health forced Rodney Crowell to postpone his Southern Fried Festival appearance, some 55 years after he began performing, the much-covered and seasoned singer-songwriter revisited and re-recorded a clutch of his songs on Close Ties, a stripped-back retrospective that he belatedly showcased.

Clear-eyed and confessional, the mournfully dreamlike Reckless revised the roistering swagger of a rolling stone from the perspective of a burnt-out playboy, while the bluesily hard walk down memory lane of East Houston Blues captured his volatile youth.

Flanked by the virtuoso fiddler Eamon Mcloughlin and the prodigious young guitarist Joe Robinson, the trio flirted with rock ‘n’ roll on the friskily frenetic Frankie Please. But the abiding mood was lament for love lost, with Crowell casting unsentimentally back through collaborations with Emmylou Harris and his exwife Roseanne Cash. Nevertheless, the highlight proved to be the fraternal twin tales of reconciliation I Wish it Would Rain and Wandering Boy, with Robinson’s guitar bringing the latter to a stirring climax.

Iris Dement had a task on her hands to match that but she did with a composed yet highly emotive set, her lyricism as grounded and cinematic as Crowell’s but with spiritual aspirations too.

The centrepiece was her melodic adaptations of the poems of Anna Akhmatova, her distinctively fragile voice making Like a White Stone a country-soul hymn wrenched from the raw pain of Stalinist Russia.

Let the Mystery Be ached as well, with the uncertainty of wry, agnostic gospel, while an encore of the textured, bittersweet Our Town was powerful testament to her complex, nuanced writing and heartfelt performance.

JAY RICHARDSON