Duffy
Pigalle, London W1
THREE STARS

Cat Power
Jukebox
Matador Records, out tomorrow
THREE STARS

A slip of a girl stands on a tiny stage. Behind her are six male musicians, so squashed that all three guitarists are standing side-on, like bookends. At the girl’s feet are a setlist, two bottles of mineral water, a small white towel, and the British music industry.

Duffy, aged 23, is a hot tip in the new-year polls. Her debut album isn’t out till March, but she has come a long way already. She grew up in Nefyn, a seaside village in north Wales where her parents ran a hotel; Welsh was her first language. It was a leap moving to another Welsh village, Letterston in Pembrokeshire, when her parents split up. Her big eyes hardly need their black make-up: they are wide at just being in London.

The road to the top is paved with lavish comparisons. Duffy keeps being proclaimed the new Dusty Springfield and the new Amy Winehouse. She has fanned one set of flames with her Sixties look, simultaneously glamorous and cuddly, while dousing the other by discarding her first name, which is Amy.

Duffy’s sound does hark back to Dusty, with its big hooks and dramatic arrangements, although she is just as indebted to Motown – and to Winehouse, in that she is reviving a genre that is twice her age. But there are key differences too. Springfield wasn’t a revivalist, and Winehouse isn’t retro in her lyrics: her magic lies in the contrast between the vintage backing and her withering modernity.

Duffy’s words are not so contemporary. Rockferry, her calling card, is a period piece of the kind her producer, Bernard Butler, used to make with David McAlmont. It works well on record and even better live, although it’s the first song and she stands stock-still with nerves.

Her voice has two modes, kittenish and rasping, both lovable. As yet, she is a better singer than song selector, but the good bits of her 50-minute show are excellent. Warwick Avenue makes up in charm what it lacks in authentic Welshness. The next single, Mercy, shows that the Motown formula – big beat, good vibes, soulful vocals – still makes people smile after 45 years.

The encore is Distant Dreamer, limited on record, but something special here as Duffy’s tireless, boiler-suited percussionist joins in on double drums and her voice lets rip, liberated by sheer relief. She will go far – as long as we don’t rush her.

Cat Power’s Jukebox should be a sure-fire pleasure. With her last album, The Greatest (2006), Power went to Memphis, worked with Al Green’s old musicians, and hit on a warm southern soul sound that perfectly suited her slow-burning voice. It turned a chequered career into a glittering one, collecting rave reviews and winning the Shortlist Music Prize in America.

Jukebox, made with her new touring band the Dirty Delta Blues Band, largely consists of other people’s songs, like The Covers Record (2000). That album began with an old chestnut – the Stones’ Satisfaction – remade so boldly that it was wrecked. This time the same fate befalls Sinatra’s New York, New York. In ridding the song of its swagger, she reduces it to turgid hippie blues-rock.

With her iconoclasm out of her system, she does much better. Tackling Hank Williams’s Ramblin’ Man, Power makes it her own in a good way, changing its name to Ramblin’ (Wo)man, and adding a sexy sizzle and a haunting atmosphere to its descending chords.

The rest is patchy, but the highlights are unmissable. George Jackson’s Aretha, Sing One For Me is given a Stones treatment that reminds you how good the Stones used to be at ballads, and the album ends far better than it started, with a triptych of great women’s songs.

Billie Holiday’s Don’t Explain becomes a gorgeous ache, Joni Mitchell’s Blue a mysterious meditation, and Woman Left Lonely (written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, but defined by Janis Joplin) is just beautiful, as a piercingly intimate vocal plays off a grave piano. At her best, as Mojo magazine said, Cat Power doesn’t cover a song – she uncovers it.

Like those? Try this
At Her Very Best by Dusty Springfield (UMTV, 2006). Perfect Sixties pop