Kacey Musgraves at the Royal Albert Hall

Kacey Musgraves
Sugar & The Hi Lows
Royal Albert Hall, 18 November 2015

"This is the fanciest place I've ever been to," Kacey Musgraves tells the crowd tonight, "how did they let me in?" Funnily enough, although she's the first country artist to sell out the Royal Albert Hall in 12 years, she and her band, resplendent in their matching light-up suits, seem a natural fit to the grand surroundings. It's easy to compare Musgraves to Taylor Swift but whereas Swift was obviously reared on Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Reba McEntire, Kacey was obviously listening to Bobbie Gentry, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, mixing their small-town country wisdom and Vegas glamour with a more modern slant. Musgraves afterall name-checks Gram Parsons and duets with Willie Nelson on her latest record and, despite wearing a Katy Perry-esque sparkly leotard with her cowgirl hat and boots, I just can't imagine her deserting her country-roots for pop stardom the way Swift has.

Like any decent pop diva she is half an hour late to the stage though, with the crowd eventually driven to stomp their feet to encourage her on, but this may well be more due to the recent and very awful attacks in Paris and an increase in security at the venue. Later she does give a very heartfelt and tearful speech about it, thanking us for being brave enough to come out tonight and giving a special mention to the security guards and their good work. "They asked me if I wanted to cancel this tour and I said, hell no!" she told us. "I really didn't want to because music can be very healing to everyone, including me," she admitted tearfully, in quite a touching moment.

Apart from this, the rest of the show was pure fun, as sparkly and happy as her showgirl-meets-cowgirl outfit, that made you feel like you were witnessing a classic, glammed-up Ole Opry performance. Walking out to a recording of an old beauty contest theme, wearing her sequined play-suit and a big, ruffly satin skater skirt, when she sang "I ain't pageant material" in the chorus of the title track of her new album, she couldn't look more like a beauty queen if she tried. She even joked after the line "there's no way you'll ever seen me in a swimsuit on a stage", asking her band "is this a swimsuit?" (yes, yes it is Kacey, just a very sparkly one!). This playfulness is very reminiscent of Dolly and completely charming too. Kacey obviously isn't dumb but she isn't afraid to make fun of herself either making her very endearing.

The show is of course heavy on songs from Pageant Material, which is no bad thing because it's one of the best records released this year. This means there are lots of highlights which are actually courtesy of the new tracks. Although the record doesn't sound old-fashioned in any way, there is something about its storytelling that is very classic country and live songs like Biscuits ("mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy"), This Town ("round here we all look out for each other"), Cup Of Tea ("maybe you're still driving your high school car, maybe you still don't know just who you are")  and Family Is Family ("you might look just like 'em, that don't mean that you like 'em but you love 'em") communicate in a universal way that Loretta Lynn's or Kitty Wells' songs always have.

She even acknowledges this when she introduces one of her most famous songs, Merry Go Round, saying that she wrote it about her hometown whose population is smaller than that of the audience tonight, yet had lots of Brits on her previous trips here telling her how much they related to the song and that "that's my life!". She sings it alone on the stage with just an acoustic guitar and it ends up with the whole crowd singing along. It's a magical moment that clearly overwhelms Musgraves in the nicest way and speaks volumes about the power of music and how one song about a little town in Texas can relate to people all over the world.

There are also lots of lovely moments in between songs, like when she attempts to do a British accent by saying "Jammy Dodgers" and gets her band to show off their special talents (the best one is her guitarist who can juggle and able to launch the balls into each band member's hat at the end). But the best moment comes when she tells the story, during an excellent version of the song, Dime Store Cowgirl, about one of her first performances as a little girl, when the mother of a rival viciously told her that her cowboy hat made her look like a "dime store cowgirl". "And here I am all these years later playing to a sold out crowd at the Royal Albert Hall", leading to a roar of cheers from the audience. Every country fan loves a success story like that.

There were covers of other artists too, the most successful being a Carrie Underwood song (Mama's Broken Heart) and a surprisingly good version of TLC's No Scrubs (who would have thought it could have so seamlessly turned into a country tune?) but her cover of Coldplay's Yellow was, well, dull, but then it's hard to make Coldplay exciting even by adding a little twang. Later, after a storming version of her biggest hit, Follow Your Arrow, which once again gets the whole crowd singing along, she returns to the stage in illuminated cowboy boots and sings the old Nancy Sinatra classic These Boots Are Made For Walkin', which is undoubtedly fun but I would have given anything to instead hear Kacey's own song, Good Ol' Boys Club, where she takes on the sexism in country music and makes it upbeat and catchy as hell. Ah well. It, along with the Coldplay cover, are just small misstep.

Rather nicely, for the encore, she ends on a real old-time country note, singing into an old radio microphone with her band gathered around her sans instruments and they sing an a cappella version of the old Roy Rogers tune Happy Trails, which not only shows her true love of traditional country music but it a beautiful and sweet send-off at the end of a rather perfect night.

Supporting Kacey tonight were a country pop act from Nashville called Sugar & The Hi Lows. The band is essentially a collaboration between two solo country artists, Trent Dabbs and Amy Stroup, and the band's fashion-sense (the guys all looking like suited country stars from the 50s and Stroup dressed like a 70s, big-hatted country queen), was pretty much a visual representation of their sound. There was, of course, country but also rockabilly, folk and pop and even a little R&B, especially on their last track which Dabbs told us was inspired by the Otis Redding records his dad played to him growing up (although to me it sounded more like a jam rather than a fully formed song). They were certainly enjoyable enough and I saw a lot of people buying their records at the end (that said, they were at the merchandise desk signing stuff) but their one cover of the night, which should have been a highlight given how great the original is - a cover of the Johnny and June Cash classic Jackson - instead just showed they are no Johnny and June. But, as Sugar & The Hi Lows they are certainly worth keeping an ear out for.