THERE was something circular about this show. Eddi Reader was the first person to sing in this building after it was converted from a church to a theatre, and likewise her career seems to have come full circle. Held in higher regard now than at any time (some five solo albums and almost 13 years) since the short-lived fame of Fairground Attraction, Reader has had to work hard for solo recognition.

Yet, in other respects, the circle connects back to Fairground Attraction, even though only one musician, drummer Roy Dodds, and one song, Claire - performed unaccompanied - remain from that era. With an accomplished songwriter in the band in the shape of Boo Hewerdine, the sound is not that dissimilar to her former band's blueprint, though the songs Reader and Hewerdine have jointly composed have considerably more gravity than Mark Nevin's.

This means a show that is jazzy, subdued, and vocally adroit, with songs such as Hummingbird and Joke about as upbeat as it gets. Vocally, Reader seems to have more in common with male singers like Donny Hathaway and Billy MacKenzie than any of her female contemporaries. Like them, her voice is at its best when in possession of a great song, and these have often come from the pens of other writers, like her version of Van Morrison's Into the Mystic, or the snippets of La Vie En Rose, Get Happy, and Everybody's Talking that meander into her own songs. In the likes of The Wanting Kind, Girl Who Fell in Love With the Moon, and Kite Flyer's Hill, she has songs of her own of equal standard.

Though there was little unexpected about Thursday's proceedings, the music was modest,

dignified and, to use her favourite phrase, ''a blessing''.