Christina Courtin plays the second of two shows in California this week in a set at the Swedish American Music Hall's Café du Nord in San Francisco tonight. On the program are songs from her recently released self-titled Nonesuch debut, with some new ones on tap as well. She performed at Largo at the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, which the Los Angeles Times's "Pop & Hiss" music blog dubbed "refreshingly un-ethereal."

Reviewer August Brown explains, saying Christina "offered one of the best correctives to the ever more ubiquitous images of wispy, inscrutable hipstresses with a set of completely endearing yet really sturdy and inventive folk-pop."

Even with oft-mentioned professional training Christina received on the violin while a student at The Juilliard School, "the real charms of her set," Brown insists, "were anything but institutional," citing songs like "Green Jay," "where she gets to run her voice in circles around a pretty, adeptly straightforward folk backdrop."

What's more, Brown praises her songs' "eminently catchy and anticipatory" melodies and describes the personable nature she exudes from the stage as "both disarming and compelling at once." That Christina so deftly combines her technical abilities and an accessibility in her work is evident in that "the breadth of her skills never overwhelmed the somewhat goofy yet revealing and incisive quality of her writing."

Read the full concert review at latimesblogs.latimes.com.