Emmy The Great @ Cabaret Voltaire, 16 Feb

Emmy seems to have an odd way of dealing with her emotions. Gentle songs like brightly coloured blogs, bicycles and ice cream brush over mild heartaches, exuding serene indifference to any real strength of feeling. Packed with pop music references, her music is heavy with pastiche, knowing nods and a twee innocence that almost seems unintentional. Amusing as this might be initially, it quickly becomes tiresome; when dragged out across a crawling hour long set, it becomes almost intolerable. It is no coincidence that First Love, her standout track, is a song on which she relies so heavily upon this mimicking trick - it's a backward version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, from which she steals not only the odd lyric or enunciation, but a whole refrain. When her better material is caught hiding behind other artists' songs, the lack of substance in her own tunes becomes inescapable. [Jamie Scott]