Separately, these are the very best of times for Sharon Jones and her sharp-suited eight man backing band.

After years that apparently included a stint as a prison guard, the tiny adopted New Yorker was an acclaimed part of Lou Reed's Berlin tour and had a minor role in Denzel Washington's The Great Debators film. The Dap-Kings own Brooklyn's hippest studio and backed Amy Winehouse on much of the recorded version of Back To Black and her last American tour.

Together band and singer converge joyfully. We have seen their like before: as if hip-hop had never happened, they offer an old-fashioned soul review, complete with fast-talking MC Binky Griptite (possibly not his real name) in best carney form, repeatedly plugging the merchandise stall where, he claimed, it was possible to purchase 'anything your funky heart desires.' They were brass-led, more funky than mere mortals have a right to be and, inevitably, drilled to near-perfection.

Jones was something else entirely. This pocket battleship delivered her conversational, Stax-esque tales of good sex with bad men and bad sex with good men via a seen-it-all, done-itall, wouldn't-mind-seeing-or-doing-it-again air, most stirringly on the covertly explicit Fish In The Dish or the feisty Nobody's Baby.

A rip-roaring version of James Brown's It's A Man's Man's Man's showed this vocal Vesuvius could do straight soul as convincingly her most obvious musical forebear Lyn Collins, and in a turbo-charged interlude that invoked the ghosts of slavery and native American culture, the 51-year-old shed her heels and whirled around stage, as much soul dervish as soul diva. A life-affirming treat.

Until tomorrow (0870 060 3777)