A round-up of reviews from Irish Timeswriters

Joanna Newsom Olympia Theatre, Dublin

Conventional wisdom says that Joanna Newsom should be a hard sell: she's a folk harpist; she has a squeaky singing voice; she writes dense, heavily symbolic lyrics; and her songs are so long they wouldn't fit between the ad breaks on your average radio show. She is, it would seem, an acquired taste. Happily, it's a taste that seems to have been widely and enthusiastically acquired here - this concert sold out in days.

The 25-year-old's second album, Ys(which might as well be subtitled "Pronounced Ees" so often does its name have to be explained), is an astonishing achievement. Its five songs, narrative poems that ranged in length from seven to 16 minutes, were complemented by sumptuous orchestration arranged by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. Bringing such a grandiose piece of work on the road might have proved a challenge, but Newsom is touring with just three other musicians, whose sparse contributions on tambura, violin and drums subtly augment Newsom's harp. The sound may have been stripped down, but the music's power was in no way diminished.

Watching Newsom perform is as mesmerising as hearing her play - her fingers dance and flit across the strings as the huge instrument leans on her shoulder. Seeing the plucked strings build into the familiar sounds of her songs is like discovering how a magic trick actually works. Another revelation was hearing her speak - her singing voice is so idiosyncratic that it was quite a surprise to hear her talk without so much as a yelp or a squeak. Smiling broadly between songs, she chatted easily with the crowd, who rapturously received every song as if it were the end of the show. While Newsom and her band played, however, the auditorium was so appreciatively silent it might as well have been a recording studio.

The two-hour set consisted of the five songs from Ys, played in order, interspersed with songs from her relatively conventional first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender. As she played her encore, wrestling yet more beauty from her harp's strings, it was perfectly obvious why Newsom isn't in fact a hard sell at all - as the audience at this performance would testify, acquiring a taste for music this remarkable is a singular pleasure. Davin O'Dwyer

Trio Quattro St Audoen's Church, Dublin

Benjamin Dwyer -Passacaille. Handel -Violin Sonata in D. Handel, Telemann, Quantz- trio sonatas

This concert was part of the Temple Bar Cultural Trust's Handel Festival, which has sprung up around the now annual commemorative performance of Handel's Messiahon the site of its first performance on Fishamble Street in April 1742.

St Audoen's Church had already been part of that neighbourhood for nearly half a millennium by then and so made for an appealingly authentic venue. Also authentic was the programme's preponderance of trio sonatas, of which hundreds were composed and which were the most popular form of chamber music in the Baroque era.

Such sonatas were widely played by amateurs in the home as well as by full-time musicians. There was therefore further authenticity in the make-up of the Trio Quattro, three of whose four players are from the one family, raising the attractive prospect of the kind of once-common domestic music-making that's now increasingly rare.

Whether or not they actually prepared in the family sitting-room, the very notion added to the spirit of their vivid performances of trio sonatas by Handel, Quantz and Telemann, in which the sensitive interweaving and imitative interplay of the two top voices featured the mother- and daughter-in-law tandem of recorder player Jenny Robinson and Baroque violinist Anita Vedres.

Vedres's husband, Malachy Robinson, played the violone or bass viol, precursor of the double bass. As well as sensitively reinforcing the bass line, Robinson also demonstrated a remarkable lyrical dexterity in melodic passages which he gamely poached from harpsichordist Ian Pritchard. The most striking example of this was in the flying third movement of Handel's D major Violin Sonata (HWV), played with a nice balance of Baroque cool and expressive warmth by Vedres.

The programme also included Benjamin Dwyer's Passacaille, a festival commission receiving its premiere. After opening on the violin with the soulful air of a solo sonata, the short piece quickly developed a kind of restless anxiety as the harpsichord and violone joined in, leading to a forceful climax and then a quiet, rather dark coda. This dark quality and Dwyer's contemporary idiom enriched an important element of the concert's Baroque aesthetic: contrast. Michael Dungan

The Twang Whelan's, Dublin

Birmingham wideboys the Twang are living it, loving it and larging it with an enthusiasm that stages much larger than this couldn't contain. A tight 45-minute set packs in enough energy to power a small city, and what they lack on quantity they make up for in vigour.

This is a raw, honest performance. The Twang seem to be delighted on stage, and it's hard to describe them without expletives - their music and lyrics are full of them, and the inter-song banter would make Roy "Chubby" Brown blush. But anything else would be misleading. These are not lovelorn songs crafted in a bedsit by candlelight - these are banging, brash tunes about being dumped on FA Cup final day. It's not big, it's not pretty, but it has a resonance and rough-hewn elegance that resonates with the ring of flinty honesty.

The Twang are definitely a band for lads and, oddly for a group so young who have yet to release their debut, this performance was an exercise in nostalgia. Brummie roots aside, the delayed guitar, throbbing bass and funky kit all scream Madchester in a way that hasn't been heard or fundamentally altered since the heyday of the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. Mike Skinner might be the voice of London, but the Midlands has its own chorus, and it's every bit as pushy, aggressive and pithy as the Streets of the capital.

This is a team of two halves. The two lead singers, Phil Etheridge and Martin Saunders, dominate proceedings with an enthusiasm that is utterly contagious - this pair could incite a riot in a nursing home (the band have been banned from most of their local venues, due to the crowd getting too carried away). The rest of the band have their work cut out keeping up, and guitarist Stu Hartland is so busy churning out what melody there is that the cheerleading of the crowd is left to the two attacking forwards.

Given a bigger set up and a larger stage, the Twang could have thousands on their feet rather than a few hundred, which makes them a tempting prospect for this summer's round of festivals. Whether they will have the musicality to get away with it remains to be tested, but live it's a baggy bonanza. Laurence Mackin