Some folk like four spoons of sugar in their tea.

Jennifer Crook served up a sweet sweet collection of her songs that was not to everyone's taste.

She is an accomplished musician and played the lap harp ... sweetly.

She also played banjo and guitar with Beth Porter on cello and Mike Crosgrove accordion and acoustic. The sound was invariably easy on the ear yet rarely moved the spirit.

Crook's songs all left the impression that they had been left to soak overnight in a solution of romantic clichés.

Her vocal was suitably plaintive and the three together conjured gentle harmonies that achieved nothing more than to highlight the hackneyed lyrics.

The two sets were both stuck in the same gear, maudlin.

This was Leonard Cohen without the poetry. In fact, the melody of The Net had been unashamedly borrowed from Cohen's Suzanne.

The audience in The Greys was a mature one, weaned on female artists such as Joni Mitchell, a writer who has a particular disdain for a lyric that sounds as if it means something but is actually vacuous.

Crook lost a fair few punters at the interval.

Uninspired and uninspiring, despite the thick coating of sugar the evening's insipidness could not be masked.

Two stars