Siobhán Long finds music by Liz Carroll and John Doyle is enough to buoy the most faltering spirit

Liz Carroll and John Doyle, Airfield House, Dublin

Sweet and low down, that's where Liz Carroll's music lurks; deep in the recesses of the listener's skull, where it can burrow and delve its way past the glare of consciousness, perching itself in the deep subconscious long after the performance is over.

On the final night of their short Irish tour, Chicago fiddler Liz Carroll and Dublin-born, North Carolina-based guitarist and singer John Doyle lit a fire beneath their customarily eclectic repertoire, much of it composed by Carroll herself.

Kick-starting the night with a trio of tunes - Fremont Center, The Vornado and Minutemen - Doyle's guitar was taut as a coiled spring, countered perfectly by Carroll's own initially languorous fiddle lines. Dundrum's Airfield House was a glorious venue for such a duo, welcoming the acoustic set with a relaxed reverence, although at times Doyle's guitar threatened to overwhelm the fiddle, with Carroll's tight bowing style failing to navigate a pathway to every corner of the room.

Carroll's love of the reel found full expression in a rake of examples, but none were more mischievous than the pair she'd christened The Ronan Boys and Ralph's 2-3-5, the latter punctuated by enough hairpin bends to challenge the most sophisticated of rhythm masters.

A broken guitar string meant Carroll had to tackle Castle Kelly and The Galway Rambler solo, her bow hand strikingly restrained and yet still effortlessly coaxing the lunging rhythms out into the damp air. Somehow she managed to conjure a smoked, Appalachian touch from The Island of Woods, a slow air of her own that built on a quiet lyrical intensity, never bothering to seek out the limelight, favouring a clean melodic line, as though dictated by an architect hell-bent on minimalism.

Doyle's voice struggled to rise above his acoustic guitar, and while his repertoire is unquestionably diverse, stretching from The Apprentice Boy to The Hare's Lament, he failed to ignite vocally, although his accompaniment of Carroll never fell short of impressive inventiveness.

The refinement of the tunes, which Carroll and Doyle merely admitted to "making up" (never deigning to suggest that they "composed" them) was enough to buoy the most faltering spirit.