Nina Nastasia at St George's, Bristol

There's a thing about Tuvans at the moment. I mean, when we discovered Yat Kha all those years ago, they were the one of the most amazing musical creations I'd ever heard. Plus, their founder with his electric guitar built Tuvan throat music into a whole different kind of music. What's this got to do with Nina Nastasia? I hear you cry. Well, I'm afraid that Nina, bless her, seems to have realised (a little too late IMHO) how cool Tuvan music is these days.

Michael Ormiston came to the Venn festival, a few months after a seminal Yat Kha gig. Yat Kha themselves appeared on Susheela Rahman's last album Love Trap. And last night, Nina Nastasia brought in a couple for the second half of her gig.

There are some lessons we learn from this. Her producers made her do it. Maybe. I'd like to give her credit, it doesn't seem that she's the kind of writer to be told what to do. It's just that some of the songs were so obviously written for the Igil and they were quite annoying, boring, even, compared to the rest of her work. However, there were other songs, where it sounded more like they had been added afterwards, and those ones were really good. So my conclusion, is that while the fashion is dictating how much Tuvan music we get given these days, we can't write for it, because it is inherent in all music.

If you don't know her, Nina is a very strange mixture of sometimes simple, nursery-rhyme like melodies and jarring clashes between the viola's harmonics, an accordion and her voice. I couldn't help drawing comparisons between her acoustic sound and Kristin Hersh's... Kristin is a lot more crazy though, which is why she's the best... Other times, she sings like Jewel without the silly affected voice.

No bass player. Once I'd got over that, a lot of the songs were very compelling still, just couldn't shake the feeling that we were all being played for suckers a little bit. Yes the Tuvans are amazing. Yes their techniques are stunning, but this wasn't really up to the right standard to be able to carry it off. Just stick to what you do best Nina!