Jenny Owen Youngs LIVE

You might have thought that a near two hour journey to Manchester would have been a portent for a bad evening (fact fans, it should take about 45 minutes tops) but after one of those stupendous Chinese buffet things (where the waitress was getting rather concerned about just how many pints we were having - for the record we only had four each) we sauntered across to the Night & Day.

Not many people were in, for the first time that I've ever been there they'd left tables and chairs out for people, so after catching the end of support act Dave House's (Air pressener in all of my houses) spot we leisurely made our way to front row spots. And as an aside, we didn't block anyone's view, it was just that there was a raft of space near the stage.

Jenny Owen Youngs was, quite simply, fantastic. Despite the fact she was suffering from a cold (and if I'm being honest, you wouldn't have known from her performance) and thus warned off anyone who "wanted to make out" with her afterwards, and despite some dodgy leads, sound systems, she put on a superb performance.

She was funny too. One particular highlight was "this guitar is fucking me in the ass." Which admittedly doesn't sound funny when written down like that but regardless it had me in stitches. It's hard to pick a highlight from the actual set as everything was just spot on.

She mingled with the public afterwards, asking Jazz Hands to take her to Paris and was just as delightful in that setting as well. All in all, a rather wonderful ending to the concerts of 2007. Roll on 2008.