Princess Superstar/Lisa D

Who is that girl? Tramping heavily back and forth, with purpose, with authority, with a big booming voice that sounds, as all good MCing should, like the truth. Trumpeter

blaring hysterically to her right like a

nighttime siren. Smart denim chalkstripe B-girl pantsuit flashing. Pink-angora cocked hat into which she could knock Princess Superstar, incidentally, because indeed it’s not Concetta from New York, it’s Lisa D from our own biggish smoke.

What she has (in spades) in rapping style, she lacks a bit in storytelling, but, as she tells me after the show, she’s off to Brooklyn soon for a few months “to learn about hip hop for real”. So that’s OK then.

Meanwhile, we have a proper New Yorker, looking indeed like royalty, and having a serious off-night. “Wassup Dubliiiin!” yells Princess Superstar, a delightfully normal-looking Jewish woman, if you don’t count the black-slashed Kylie catsuit, the No Doubt bikini, and the glinting white-blond ‘do of a jazz-mag starlet. And her presence – her loping strut, her easy smile, the sheer audacity of her self-invention – certainly lives up to her name, if the rest of her schtick tonight does not.

That kittenish sass that works so well on record – beating the boys at their own game, girly but authoritative, laughing and intelligent as jailbait – simply doesn’t carry live: it’s too baby-powder-soft, has no sharp edges, nothing to punctuate the music (an unremarkable fug of bass-guitar, pre-recorded cuts straight from the album, and turntablism).

And for all the comedy-porn lyrics and the hand-jive of ‘Wet Wet Wet’, it ain’t so funny or so sexy, either: so not the bang we were expecting, on any level. Maybe ‘Bad Babysitter’ was a novelty single after all, granted, but surely the sprawling gospel soulscape of ‘You Get Mad At Napster’ or the introspective ‘Untouchable Part 2’ should carry tonight? No, sadly.

Woop! She’s makin’ six bucks an hour... and may be babysitting for a little while longer.