On the cusp of a second coming with new album Back To Black set for release, Amy Winehouse is getting ready for her tour proper. This gig was a pre-tour warmup and may as well have been a rehearsal.

The fact most of her band were dressed in pyjamas may have been a joke but it crossed my mind they might all have actually have just rolled out of bed, with the exception ofher two fabulous male backing singers who were dressed in baby blue showbiz suits.

Amy's streetwise sass, her chief of the chicks's strut and versatile, jazzy voice are herstrengths but tonight her performance was slack and failed to move.

As song after song passed by without her ever giving more than 65 per cent, disappointment and frustration set in.

Her band were good and at times groovy but there was a sense even they were waiting for things to kick off.

The new songs showed much promise with less jazzy inflections and more ska and funky, doo-wop influences fighting their way through.

But Amy never harnessed her own talent.

She seemed self-consciously disembodied from her old songs and fluffed her lyrics more than a couple of times.

With her boyfriend in the audience, perhaps she was feeling shy or perhaps she has grown out of her "boy done me wrong" shtick.

As she said herself, when she introduced the new song Back To Black, "This song is what all my songs are about really, things going terribly wrong - listen to me! Miss Happy Chops."

The fact things are going right in her love life is possibly why she is not connecting with her own material.

The most compelling thing about Amy was her look. She knows how to suck her teeth and talk back to an audience. Her expressions wavered between coy and cocky.

And wearing neon pink stilettos and denim cut-offs, with her huge beehive and thick, black mane cascading down her back to her new, tiny waist, she has got the lollipop look down to a fine art.