You can tell by the name of her band that Jesse Sykes isn't just here for the beer and good times. Accustomed to the chills and damp of her native Seattle, Sykes views life through a miasma of melancholy and mystery. Her songs rarely creep above a slow-to-medium tempo. She sings them in a voice that slurs and shivers with a baleful, revenant quality. It's probably only the argumentative qualities of her co-writer, guitarist and partner, Phil Wandscher, that stop her turning into that ghost-woman who crawls out of your TV set in The Ring.

Sykes has a new album, Oh, My Girl, straining at the leash, and it's a skilfully wrought tour of her preoccupations and musical traits. The title track trudges along wearily, Wandscher picking out shimmering fills and clanging chords on a big black semi-acoustic guitar as Sykes unfurls lyrics bulging with suggestion but stripped of anything resembling a linear narrative. Tell the Boys is as close as Sykes gets to rock, goading itself into an agreeable strolling tempo with burly chordsmanship from Wandscher and a bit of welly from the drummer.

But you don't feel Sykes is happy unless she's wallowing in something deep and sluggish. Her band, with its stand-up bass and droning violin, is perfectly attuned to the limpid melancholy of Reckless Burning.

You Are Not Gotten Here has Sykes materialising reluctantly through a mist with lyrics beamed in from the great beyond - "Oh, there's fire on your tongue ... There's a ghost across the room/ In the afternoon."

While it's no mean feat to construct an entire show from lagging tempos, Sykes would be at a loss without Wandscher's guitar outbursts. Adept at Roy Orbison-style lonesome prairie picking, he also helps himself to some fiery chords and free-ranging solos that get louder the longer they last. If he had a speech bubble over his head, it would say: "For Christ's sake let's get on with it."

· At the Academy, Liverpool (0151-794 6868), tonight and Whelans, Dublin (00 353 1 478 0766), tomorrow.