From Kate Bush to Björk to Tori Amos, pop audiences are fascinated by kooky women. But few have been quite as oddball as Regina Spektor. The wild-haired Muscovite-turned-Bronx-resident beats her piano stool with a cane and sings deranged fantasies about Hans Christian Andersen "having his way with me".

However, behind the bonkers persona, the classically trained twenty-something is a marvellous pianist. Unfortunately, she seems to find it impossible to sing without embellishing her words with everything from a bogus English aristocratic accent to a lisp. It's ridiculously affected and diverts the attention from what could be interesting material. "All the non-believers get to eat dirt and the believers get to spit on their graves," she says, provocatively, about religion. So why ruin the impact by wittering like a bird?

Between songs, Spektor is charm personified - if a little full of herself - and doesn't seem weird at all. However, on the one hand she's grumbling about "people who think I'm crazy" and on the other hand singing songs that wear strangeness like a badge of honour: stuff about finding human teeth and wearisome lyrics like: "Remember when we OD'd for the second time?"

If a quarter of Spektor's tales ring true then she has lived a very strange life, but lines like "Someone next door was fucking to one of my songs" don't work, partly because she's not that popular but also it would be difficult to do any physical gymnastics to her vocal contortions without suffering a hernia.

By playing it straighter she could feasibly become huge, although would have to be prepared to risk the segment of her audience who pay to watch the "kook".

· At Liverpool Academy (0870 771 2000) tonight, then touring.