With a little bit of Stax and a whole lot of super-sharp funk, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' new album, Naturally, seems to have been beamed forward from 1966. Listening to their exquisitely appointed retro soul on record there are moments when you wonder at what point tribute becomes pastiche, whether either term actually applies, and if they somehow make the music less real. Then again, as another singer once asked,"Real - compared to what?" See Sharon Jones live and, frankly, anyone who still has time for such fretting deserves the agony.

Tighter than Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, the band are also capable of cutting loose on thrilling solo flights, and Jones herself is a force of nature. The atmosphere is electrified the minute she steps on stage, and it doesn't let up.

"I guess you're wondering where I get my energy?" she asks, positing a lineage that takes in ancestors in West Africa, Native American Indians and a background in gospel. Born in Augusta, Georgia ("James Brown's hometown, I used to imitate him"), she's now resident in Brooklyn. After session work in the 1970s, her career stalled and she took a job at Rykers Island jail, until her church singing led to an independent deal in the late 1990s.

What she sings now is the soul of sharp suits and 45s, but that doesn't mean Jones is in the nostalgia business. Taxes begins with a forceful speech about President Bush's tardy response to the crisis in New Orleans. "Imagine me so angry, walking up to the White House door," she says, stalking up and down with predatory intent. "Is Mr Bush in?" She draws out the vowel in an eerie almost-whistle, sounding the "sh" like a rattlesnake's warning.

A version of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land, done as a deliciously slow and snake-hipped Harlem Shuffle, raises goose-bumps and moves feet. This music may nod to a specific moment in the past, but its white heat burns away the intervening years.

· At Fiddlers Club, Bristol (0117-987 3403), tonight, then touring.