Dido live

Dido. Apollo, Manchester

David Peschek
Monday August 16, 2004. The Guardian

When Dido appears, she is virtually the mirror image of the women who have come to see her. Even now, 21m albums down the line, Dido still looks like she has just walked out of Top Shop. That's a surprise, because opener Stoned begins with such portent that for a second it seems she might emerge, Spinal Tap-style, from a huge fibreglass cocoon.

Perhaps there is an alternative emotional Richter scale on which these vaguely melancholy songs register as violent catharsis. Mostly they replicate a mid-paced shuffle, a post-everything melange of dance and world genres. Larded with ethnic percussion, they often seem as disconnected from the matter of the songs as Dido's vocal delivery. Her range is extremely limited: she can do breathy and she can do braying - horribly reminiscent of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan. She finds it odd, she says, that Don't Leave Home has been used as a wedding song when it's actually "about addiction". But how could anyone tell?

This curious dislocation reaches a nadir in My Life. Singing "I'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself any more," she struts lazily around the stage, clapping her hands above her head and smiling blankly as the band brew up a percussive crescendo behind her for no obvious purpose other, than, perhaps, exercise.

Strange to see such detachment greeted with such fervour. Blankness so extreme, however, craves the projections of an audience, and the most moving moment tonight was when the crowd sang Thank You back at her. Dido can sing with subtlety, as she proves on Life for Rent, and she has one ace up her sleeve: the melodramatic and affecting White Flag. There's a sense, however, that even she doesn't know when she is actually good.

· At Brixton Academy, London SW9, from Tuesday to Thursday. Box office: 0870 771 2000.