Live Review: Raised By Eagles, Charles Jenkins

Sometimes it doesn't have to be all big and flashy. Find a stool in a comfortably filled room, and just listen to the songs and stories. Select a preferred product from the local craft brewery and settle in as Charles Jenkins - sans his renowned Zhivagos band and armed with just an acoustic guitar - relaxes into his task: playing that's assured without trying too hard to be clever.

Between the odd chat and occasional wink he ranged from the cautionary tale of Pray My Dear Daughter, to Across The Nullarbor's wryly confessional travelogue and the slyly self-deprecating Everyone Loves Me. "I'll lie and say Barkly Square is a beautiful part of Melbourne..." he joked, but the song of that title has some seemingly genuine love in it, even as the protagonist falls from a Brunswick pub. Continuing his travels, Trees Of Brisbane morphed into dreams of Glen Campbell's Galveston, and an obligatory sigh went 'round the room.

Wearing just enough denim, that's just worn enough to suggest they're not be trying to be fashionable, Raised By Eagles probably fit in that increasingly wide alt-country pigeonhole, even if at times you can't quite see where the 'alt' part kicks in. Opener Green Ginger Wine had a high plains twang and ticked some of the right boxes: with early Wilco textures and Avett Brothers-style harmonies as Luke Sinclair's voice often ran along the humming wires of Nick O'Mara's lap steel.

Penny Drop was an older tune returned to the set, arced up a bit with some Dylan inflexions. As the first night of the I Must Be Somewhere album launch tour, the band already seemed comfortably seamless. The new record's Heartbreaker - "A song about trying to protect yourself, maybe a little too much," as Sinclair explained - was rich, its "you never broke my heart..." refrain driving home the point. Jackie almost veered toward Springsteen or Van Morrison soul. Falling Through was melancholic for a lost friend. As it flowed, you had the feeling you were in capable hands. And sometimes that'll do.