In the crowded alt-rock scene, John Hoeffleur, singer and songwriter of the Beauty Shop, stands out like a dirty thumb with a desperately bitten nail. Though sharing an affinity with Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Jnr - with only an acoustic guitar and a bad attitude to rely on - he's no wandering troubadour battling demons. Hoeffleur's an overgrown child from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, who is uneasy in his own skin and at odds with the world. There's none of the eccentricity of Howie Gelb, not a smidgen of Ryan Adams' cool. Hoeffleur looks and sounds like what he is: an ordinary man, happiest when grumbling.

Appearing to have just woken up, hair a mess, he inelegantly tugs off a plaid shirt: "This is not the strip tease part of the thing, I'm just warm," he says cheerily. But when the sight of his faded T-shirt and pale skin prompts cheers, he snarls into the microphone, "Don't patronise me", reminding us that however cuddly he looks - and he does - Hoeffleur is not for messing with.

Nor is his music. The Beauty Shop's debut album, Your Money or Your Life, bristled with hard drinking, bad loving and genuine tenderness. Their latest release, Crisis Helpline, ponders the plight of American youth. With every country twang countered by a dirty rock riff and lilting melodies loitering over every would-be barn dance, it's a country album tailor-made for the punk and emo kids Hoeffleur is busy dissecting.

The beautifully observed The Love I Could Not Save smacks of slacker apathy, but Hoeffleur twists a fairy tale into a comment on the Columbine shootings in Rumplestiltskin Lives. "I made a mountain of coke/ That I sniffed up my nose," is the opening gambit on I Got Issues, before Hoeffleur takes psycho-babble to task.

But there's little variety in the spirit and rhythm of the songs. When Hoeffleur does break free of melancholy, bringing Babyshaker to powerful life with a roar, he's exhilarating. It's a shame he's content with merely having a moan.