With her retro stylings, belting voice and ear for a catchy riff, VV Brown could have been Amy Winehouse. Except that, when Amy’s star began to rise, VV was in LA, tied into an unhappy record contract that saw her crowbarred into making glossy R ’n’ B – “stuff that contributed to the old stereotype of black girl does soul music”.

She has since escaped and returned to Britain to make the music she always wanted to make – 1950s rock ’n’ roll with a distinctly punky sensibility. Or, as she calls it, “doo-wop indie”.

“When Amy came out I was really gutted because I’d always wanted to do music like that but my record company didn’t let me,” she says.

“I thought to myself, screw this. Now I’m making music I love and that just happens to be 1950s sounding.”

She is aware, however, the timing means she is following, rather than leading. “Sometimes I wish that if my record company had let me, then I’d have been at the forefront of this thing”

Still, her time in LA was far from wasted. Her experiences there – both personal and professional – have informed Travelling Like The Light, her debut album as VV Brown.

After calling time on a destructive relationship and leaving her record company, VV (otherwise known as Vanessa) returned to London with very little to her name.

“But having no money is a way of putting things into perspective,” she says.

“I started to make music that was more me. I didn’t have a record company breathing down my neck.”

Trained in piano and trumpet, she began teaching herself to play the guitar, picking one up in a charity shop and pulling off all but one of the strings.

“I couldn’t be bothered to learn chords,” she says.

With this lo-fi accompaniment, she wrote the whole album in one, frenetic, week, pouring out all her musical frustrations and heartache over the relationship she had ended.

“It was very cathartic, not just because of the relationship, but because I felt so liberated when I got back from America. I loved the smell of sausages and the feeling of the cold here. I’d taken all these things for granted before, but they made me feel so fired up and I guess that came through in my music.” While she treads a similar path to Amy, Duffy, Adele et al, there is a little more quirk to VV’s music.

She readily lists Super Mario games and Disney films as influences.

“I loved playing Super Mario when I was younger. There was a stroke of genius in the melody line. They were electronic and tinny sounding but if a violin played the same melody it would be considered a masterpiece.” And, despite the rolled hairstyle and a debut single that sounds eerily like Bobby Pickett’s 1962 novelty hit Monster Mash, VV insists she is not a slave to the past.

“There are ska elements to one song and an African element to another. There’s so much more in me I’d like to explore.”

Perhaps as back-up, she is also launching a vintage clothing website – VV Vintage – and a comic book, the first edition of which will take the same name as her album.

“I’m not doing things based on how big they will be or how successful. When I was younger I was looking to awards and what I’d sell and that perspective got me nowhere. These are things I’m doing just because I want to do them.”

VV Brown supports singer/songwriter Gary Go at tonight’s gig.

  • 7.30pm, £7, 01273 709709