YOU could follow the Celine Dion path, meticulous as a metronome. Or you could be like the "never-be-tidy" Alison Moyet, comfortable as a baggy sweater.

Sticking to one favourite combination of black trousers, top and jacket, she introduces songs as if chatting humorously over the fence with a neighbour, and sits out the "outros" because she doesn't want to stand there like a lemon, until dancing with abandon to Don't Go.

Dion or Moyet?

Moyet every time.

It comes down to personality, and the personality in that big mama of a blues voice.

You can't take the natural Essex appeal out of Alison: at 41, her presence is no slicker than in her Yazoo days of 21 years ago when a friend had to rustle up something for her to wear on Top of the Pops.

She does what she wants, hence Hometime, her first studio album since 1994, dominates the first half of her 20-song show as she reveals her move into ambient Goldfrapp territory.

Her band is workman-like - she doesn't name-check them - and the lighting is murky.

Hospital blues and greens are complemented by a couple of incongruous backdrops.

Like Sinead O'Connor's Barbican show last year, the voice is all, whether reviving Yazoo's Midnight and Ode To Boy, adding another shade of blue to All Cried Out, or bringing new melancholia to Melanie's Mama Mama.

She could, maybe should, do Ronnie Scott's Cabaret or a Gershwin night by candlelight but no, that would be too tidy!

Updated: 10:10 Saturday, April 12, 2003