Stamping and shaking her white-blond hair, Wallis Bird plays her acoustic guitar with everything she's got. She throws her head back and lets out a yell. As the song dies, she turns to the crowd. "I got the feeling there that it was like: 'Shut that bitch up," she jokes.

It is her humour and bold honesty that makes Irish singer-songwriter Bird so special. She sings songs about "fantastic fake boobs", drunkenness, fluttering awakenings and tender partings. She also talks incessantly, recounting tales of everything from a sweaty ex-bandmate to herpes.

But these strengths were hard-won. A childhood accident with a lawn mower led to her losing all the fingers of her left hand. After four were re-attached, Bird started playing a right-handed guitar upside-down.

Bouncing around like an excited child during Counting to Sleep, from her debut album Spoons, Wallis' is a ball of passion and energy. When she is not rasping like Janis Joplin through the gently scathing Country Bumpkins, or stirring the warmth of The Circle with the easy grace of Carole King, she is leading chants of "oggy-oggy-oggy" and demanding that the crowd sing and clap along. She breaks down words into emotive sounds, grinning as she toys with the strange noises she has discovered. Her energy never flags, and even in her quiet moments, her feet stay on the ground. "This is called a you-can-go to-the-toilet-now song," she says of ballad You Are Mine. The fact that no one moves says a great deal.

· At the Little Civic, Wolverhampton (0870 320 7000), on Wednesday, then touring.