Dolores Keane's extraordinary voice remains as powerful as ever - if anything, it has grown deeper and more gravelly with the years. She sang 13 songs at HQ, and each performance was immaculate.

And yet there's a sameness about her choice of material. Lush, emotional ballads should be taken in isolation or they lose their impact, and the concert suffered from a ballad overdose.

Keane was accompanied by guitar, mandola and keyboards, with Ruth Dillon on backing vocals (Dillon was also impressive in her solo warm-up set). The instrumentalists remained in the background, simply providing a foil for That Voice, as Keane moved through the best-known songs from her catalogue.

The maudlin Teddy O'Neill worked well, as did Never Be the Sun, but these songs are thrown into the shade by The Island. Her version of Paul Brady's magnificent song was the high point of the evening.

But the unrelenting stream of ballads is wearing and leaves you longing for a change of pace. The change eventually came in the form of a brisk, light-hearted Telling Me Lies. However, she went back to business as usual straightaway with Caledonia.

The audience was untroubled by the lack of variety, and gave Keane a standing ovation after the encore My Love is in America.

Dolores Keane plays at HQ again next Sunday evening