It is only a few months since Adele Adkins was performing in a North London pub to an audience of just two people. But things happen fast these days, and since winning the inaugural Critics' Choice Brit Award, and topping a BBC tastemakers' poll to determine who will be the “sound of 2008”, Adele has become an overnight media sensation. To celebrate the release this week of her debut album, 19, the former BRIT School student performed to a capacity crowd of 500.

Wearing a big, shapeless old cardie with a bottle of water jammed in one of the pockets, the 19-year-old singer could not have looked or behaved less like an emergent pop diva. A big woman with a big voice, she commanded the stage by sheer force of personality as much as anything else, maintaining a running commentary between songs that bore shades of the sardonic, down-to-earth wit of the

comedian Jo Brand. Adele's backing band was similarly unaffected - a bunch of fresh-faced indie kids whom she briskly introduced as Ben, Steve, Tom and Louis - but the show was lent an extra dash of sophistication by the addition of a four-woman string section seated to the side.

Electing to perform her album in sequence, Adele began with the lilting refrain of Daydreamer, accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar playing, followed by a jaunty Best for Last, on which she accompanied herself solely on an acoustic bass. The band and strings arrived for Chasing Pavements and the exceptional range of her voice was gradually revealed as she navigated the tune that has done more than most in her repertoire to earn her the dreaded “new Amy” tag. But live, she turned out to be nothing like Winehouse, more a performer in the soulful, singer-songwriter mould of Alison Moyet or, when she reached for

the high tinkling soprano of Crazy for You, like an English Minnie Riperton.

Although Adele is clearly a significant talent, this was nevertheless a comparatively slight show. Having worked her way methodically through the album, including her haunting version of Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love, she left with as little fuss as she had arrived. No encores, but a delightful taster for great things surely to come.

Tour continues: Classic Grand, Glasgow, Feb 2; Glee Club, Birmingham, Feb 3

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