As an ex-member of the potentates of twee, Belle and Sebastian, singer/cellist Isobel Campbell can't be expected to stride across the stage like a rock chick. The question is whether she can acquire enough chickness to assert herself, now that melting into the background is no longer an option. There were points during her set, which promoted the new solo album Ballad of the Broken Seas, when Campbell was so diffident that she was overshadowed by the drummer. As she sang looking at her feet, someone from her label explained: "She's just shy" - in which case, why go through the agony of performing 17 songs in front of the public? It would have been less stressful to have provided chairs and scented candles and put on the CD.

Make no mistake, Ballad of the Broken Seas is a bewitching record. A collaboration with former Queen of the Stone Age Mark Lanegan, whose dark baritone provides ballast for Campbell's sparrow-like chirp, it has justifiably won her the best notices of her solo career. Unfortunately, Lanegan couldn't make this tour, leaving Campbell in the company of Glasgow musician Eugene Kelly, who took Lanegan's vocal and guitar parts. Endowed with the requisite gravelly register, Kelly was fine. But Lanegan's presence would have made a big difference.

For all his attributes, Kelly isn't a smoulderer. With Campbell apparently barely breathing at times, there was little sense of the quiet menace that makes the album so hypnotic, and the lack thereof meant we effectively got half a show. That said, Campbell should literally have halved the show, and dropped the random instrumentals and alt-country jiggliness while retaining the core broody songs. The latter yielded some great moments: the noirish duets Ramblin' Man and Love Hurts, Campbell's velvety solo turn on the album's title track. If there had been more like them, "shyness" would have been a virtue.

· At the ABC, Glasgow, tomorrow. Box office: 0870 4000 818.