Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, may well be the face of Chanel but last night, attired in a pair of far from flattering leggings (not, of course, that there is such a garment as flattering leggings) which needed hoisting up after every song, she was the legs of Nora Batty.

And that was just the start of this most peculiar but most beguiling woman's antics.

Marshall unfurled a Van Dykian Cockney accent so awful I thought for a moment she had a hitherto unacknowledged speech impediment; she mimed shooting her spotlight man after he had the temerity to momentarily light her properly and, wordlessly, she screwed up her band's set lists and lobbed them into the crowd as the musicians shrugged their shoulders.

Marshall, then, is a character, but she is also a star and one to whom the smoking in public places laws do not apply. As feline as her stage name suggests, actually facing the crowd was a step too conventional. Instead, she showed us her profile and faced her keyboardist.

I have never seen anyone scamper quite like her, even on the street: part mime, part jog, part moonwalk (Michael Jackson rather than Neil Armstrong). It shouldn't have worked, it should have been a mess. It had its messy moments, but it did work. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

Musically uncategorisable, she touched on country, funk, punk, garage and the avant-garde: think Kate Bush without a budget, but with a southern soul sensibility.

Her versions of New York New York and Hank Williams's Ramblin' Man were almost unrecognisable, but she instinctively understood the sinister heart of darkness that beats through the ever-wondrous The Dark End of the Street.

Her own songs revealed a different kind of Cat Power entirely. Lived in Bars was a sobering drinking song, Metal Heart was as beautiful as it was haunting and The Moon as spooky as it was spooked.

There was no encore, just Marshall alone on stage, ripping up her floral tributes and hurling them back into the crowd, before skipping away. Shocking, in the very best sense.