"Let's get loose," says Adam Green. "You guys are all going to get laid anyway. I'm just the lubrication." This is typical of the mischievous wit that marks Green's emergence as a solo artist from the ashes of the Moldy Peaches.

However, while Green has a deserved reputation as a songwriter in the mould of Leonard Cohen - courtesy of albums such as 2003's Friends of Mine - he currently seems less interested in songs than in how far he can push an increasingly crude persona. One of the songs on his new, disappointing Gemstones album goes: "I would dance on NBC and say 'George Bush shook hands with me'/ And then I'd go and choke on a cock." Another: "There's one way to fuck a girl with no legs..." Such lines are at least printable, unlike some of his between-song asides. Perhaps in Bush's increasingly structured America, this sort of thing is hugely risqué. In the UK, it's easy toilet humour finding a safe home with a studenty audience. A song eulogising crack cocaine - ironic? Who knows?

Occasionally, Green abandons the hopeless gags and lets loose the baroque, almost theatrical style and perceptive lyrics that shaped his craft. Jessica, about former pop queen Jessica Simpson, and Computer Show are fabulous, sharp songs that deserve better than the clown performing them on stage.

But Green is clearly bored with his own back catalogue and would rather insert lines about the Taliban into the Libertines' What a Waster. For a millisecond, he seems to sense that this isn't funny. "Just shut up and play the songs on the record," he tells himself. It's the only sensible thing he says all night.

· At Night & Day, Manchester (0161-236 4597), tonight. Then touring.