Madeleine Peyroux may sound superficially like a cosy jazz chanteuse, but fans have been warned repeatedly that there is a temperamental artiste lurking beneath that unglamorous exterior.

Anyone here who had read her recent press would be forgiven for expecting her either to storm off early or start breathing fire.

However, there was no evidence of volatility just over a year after her last visit to the Barbican. A casual smile, a tapping of the toe, and she was off, entirely immersed in her songs.

She may prefer being tarred and feathered to giving interviews, but when it comes to her music, she is more than happy to share.

It is not exactly her own music, her repertoire consisting mainly of interpretations of classic songs from across the last century, but she brought such an individual feel to ballads such as Leonard Cohen's Half the Perfect World and Tom Waits's (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night that they became entirely hers for those few minutes.

She was backed by the stately groove of a double bassist, guitarist, drummer and a keyboardist who hopped between grand piano, organ and keyboard as though playing musical chairs against himself.

Save for the occasional brief solo, they provided a muted backdrop for her exquisite voice, a languid, meandering thing that has often been compared to Billie Holiday's. Holiday's bottomless depths of pain were not there, but her effortless expressiveness was, on tracks such as Randy Newman's I Think It's Going to Rain Today and Serge Gainsbourg's La Javanaise.

While the pace never increased to more than a leisurely trot, she offered variety with some blues on the bleak Weary Blues From Waitin', and livelier rock on A Little Bit, one of a respectable handful of original compositions.

She could have displayed a bit more of that fire - even the solos seemed tidy and careful, and that wonderful voice came so naturally to her that she never really pushed it to see what more it could do. Nevertheless, her reserved set spread a little sunshine, even closing with the standard Smile, and that was much more than many would have expected.