JOSS STONE seemed unusually subdued at Hammersmith. It cannot be easy to keep on an even keel in a year when sales of her second album, Mind, Body & Soul, have passed the million mark, when she has won two Brit awards, starred in an international Gap advertising campaign and turned 18.

And the demands she places on her voice are such that she has had to cancel shows in the past and was treated this time last year for nodules on her vocal cords.

This show, part of her biggest tour to date, was designed like a big, high-tech soul revue. There was a line of freestanding lighting rigs overhanging the stage like oil derricks, and two glitterballs the size of wrecking balls suspended above her American backing band as they began the show with a flamboyant preamble.

Then the star arrived, skipping barefoot across a stage scattered with expensive-looking rugs. Wearing a skimpy purple dress and with her long tresses tumbling over her shoulders, she set off with a brisk trot through her signature song, Super Duper Love.

But by only the third number, Fell in Love with a Boy, she was sitting on the drum riser, sipping something warm from a cup, while the band wandered through an extended vamp, and the audience dutifully sang along in her stead.

Rallying somewhat, she turned in a much stronger version of Victim of a Foolish Heart, a slow, soulful favourite from her first album, during which she was frequently bent double with the physical effort and emotion she poured into the performance.

Although less the waiflike ingénue these days, she still corpsed rather self-consciously between songs and struggled to maintain her composure in the face of some good-natured banter from the crowd.

The conflict between her vocal style (that of an African-American soul singer) and her actual persona (blonde cutie from Devon) remains a source of tension. But Stone is catering for a huge gap in the market, and generally doing so to a very high standard.

However, her voice on this occasion sounded hoarse and lacking in power, and she had barely got into her stride when she announced that another old standard, Some Kind of Wonderful, would be the last song of the night. A funked-up version of the number was padded out, with solo turns from all five musicians and three backing singers.

She returned for a brief encore of the Queen/David Bowie song Under Pressure, after which the lights quickly went up. She looked as if she could do with the early night.



Tour date: Tonight Hammersmith Apollo, 0870 606 3400.