From the moment they emerge on to the seemingly boundless stage you can tell that the Be Good Tanyas are fazed. They gawp up at the balconies and confess that the boxes jutting from each side of the auditorium are disturbing. "I keep expecting them to fly off, like Star Wars or something," singer Frazey Ford laughs, nervously. "Do you have binoculars?" asks Samantha Parton, failing to conceal herself behind a mandolin. She cackles almost hysterically when someone shouts yes.
The Canadian trio appear endearingly mystified by their own success. Far from selling 500 copies, as they expected, their debut album, Blue Horse, has shifted several thousand units. Listening to that and its recent follow-up, Chinatown, the reason for their popularity isn't immediately clear: their girlish, floating folk is beguiling, but melts into the background a little too easily. On stage, however, their idiosyncratic appeal beams out.
In part that appeal lies in their looks. Ford is mesmerising: dressed in a vintage gown with a flower at her ear, she is a weirdly ethereal presence, twirling her arms and giving every impression of trying to balance on a cloud. Trish Klein is more otherworldly still: when she plays banjo, or slides her fingers across an electric guitar, she could be communing with spirits. The trio perform in a mist of shyness, yet their rapport with the crowd is faultless; hearts melt when they ask us to bunch together for a group photo.
Oddly, while the women themselves are blurred, their songs have a robustness missing on record. They emerge cragged, glintingly modern, utterly hypnotic in their weave of fluttering melodies. The trio's musical personality is so strong that Ford's The Junkie Song and ancient ballad The Coo Coo Bird, played side by side, sound equally characteristic; Ford infuses both with a crackling sense of human desperation.
What sets the trio apart from the folk crowd, however, is their range of influence. At its least interesting, that results in the conventional power-pop of It's Not Happening. At their most fascinating, however, the songs radiate the sensualness of 1960s soul. You can trace it in the languid tease of Parton's Don't You Fall, and in the breathy way Ford sings "My palms are not open, they're closed, they're closed" in the lovelorn Only in the Past. They play a pared-back version of That's How Strong My Love Is and it feels like seduction. It is no surprise that a stall selling their records is crowded at the show's end.
·: At the Anvil, Basingstoke (01256 844244), on Wednesday, then touring.
