Serafina Steer @ Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 18 April

Serafina Steer's third and latest album, the Jarvis Cocker-produced The Moths Are Real, confirmed the young harpist as an artist of vision and depth. Measured and stately, but gnarly with a vagabond spirit, it saw her songcraft finally catch up with her unquestioned musicianship. A deftly orchestrated, often spartan work, it's not the kind of album whose creator you would expect to see pitch up in such a potentially unforgiving venue as Soup Kitchen, despite the basement's well-loved status among artists and punters alike – and it's to Steer's credit that she's not cowed by its CBGB's vibe. She confronts it, inhabits it, and makes it work for her.

Unsurprisingly, it's the detail, the complex geometry of her repertoire, that exerts pull. In a live setting, her songs are brought into greater relief away from the layered arrangements of their recorded versions – truly revealing their core, and more. Steer's voice, grave and woody, is ballast to the needlepoint array of her strings. Lost in the hushed recesses of Night Before Mutiny, her mode of expression becomes a tightrope walk – and you marvel at her bravery.

She plays with grace but with gusto, too; her fingers flit and blur. “They left me here with a ship to sink,” she sings, and we're cast away, too. The walls blur, and chatter subsides. No one dare look away lest the spell be broken – but there's nothing illusory about Steer's dark magic. The simple fact is, she's unique; her whispery hymnals proof positive that to shake it up, you don't have to shake the walls. [Gary Kaill]