After escaping Spiceworld, Melanie Chisholm embraced rock music as other survivors find religion. But despite the tattoos and casual use of rock riffs, she's always seemed a pop dilettante playing hard. Until now. Tossing her hair like Ozzy, stroking her breasts with the steely eyed focus of a young Madonna, Chisholm has found a new determination - and an axe to grind.

At the start of 2004, she was dropped by Virgin Records, an apparent act of betrayal that didn't so much surprise as poleaxe Chisholm, if her subsequent album, Beautiful Intentions, is to be believed. Released on her own, self-funded Red Girl Records label, the album is a bitter attack on her old employers. A chorus-led confection of vulnerability and hurt, its needling intent - You'll Get Yours and Don't Need This are just two titles - and aggressive pop-rock sound make it Chisholm's strongest album to date.

But she's no Ashlee Simpson. Watching a woman who pioneered girl power sing: "Sell your life, sell your soul, telling everyone you know you're living your dream," as Chisholm does in Next Best Superstar, is ironic at best. So, along with throwing herself around to every stinging rhythm, she falls back on the solid work ethic and charm of her previous pop incarnation. "I've got some serious making up to do, haven't I?" she says, a reference to a cancelled London show last month, her voice contrite. By way of compensation she tears through her surprising number of hits with a passion that is pure showbiz, only pausing to spit water into a bucket after every song.

But even Chisholm's lungs and fighting spirit can't enliven the atmosphere. Though the crowd of aging Spice-ettes and angsty teens wake up for early hits Going Down and Ga Ga - and an acoustic version of I Turn to You provokes a singalong - Chisholm has a fight on her hands. Good job she's in the mood for it.

· At King Tut's Wah Wah Club, Glasgow, on May 26. Box office: 0141-221 5279. Then touring.