The stage is covered with rugs. There are bean bags and oversized scatter cushions in metallic fabrics and crushed velvet. Someone has done something creative with the microphone stand and a length of pink tulle. You rather expect Joss Stone to appear with her hands over her face and Carol Smillie steering her from behind: "OK, you can open your eyes! You've gone very quiet." "Um, I like the bean bags."

It does not really look like a stage set for an R&B diva, but Joss Stone does not really sound like an R&B diva, at least between songs. While she is singing, all is well. Tracks from new album Mind, Body and Soul ditch the Memphis stylings of her multi-platinum debut The Soul Sessions for a more local-radio-friendly sound - less Deep South, more South Mimms Services - but her voice still makes the scatter cushions shake during Spoiled. However, when the music dies away, you are left in no doubt that you are watching a Devon teenager. Applause brings on embarrassed giggles, as if she would prefer the audience to signify approval by giving a quiet thumbs-up.

Occasionally, the contrast works. As Spoiled ends and the giggling begins, there's a moment of confusion, as if the audience can't quite believe the two noises are coming out of the same mouth. Other times it does not, as on her cover of Bobby Miller's Dirty Man. You cannot picture Stone as a housewife scorning her adulterous husband; the overall effect is unfortunately comic. "You dirty, dirty man," she sings, and you think not of an aggrieved lover but of Harry H Corbett admonishing Wilfred Brambell for wearing his socks in the bath.

The audience seem as unbothered by this as they do by Stone's own lyrics, some of which deal with adolescent sexuality in a manner that would have won the approval of late French pop lecher Serge Gainsbourg. "Tonight is the night you make me a woman," she growls. Then the song ends. Tee-hee.

· At the Academy, Glasgow (0870 169 0100), on November 3. Then touring.