L. A. lady Maria McKee has quite a wayward muse, and it wandered all over the place at the Olympia last night, going where even angels feared to tread. For those of you who may not have noticed, McKee has had two albums out since her massive hit single, Show Me Heaven, and her most recent one, Life Is Sweet, sees her making a radical change of direction from country tinged chanteuse to glam grunge screech owl. Her stated intention is to be "a sort of post punk Edith Piaf", but what we got last night was a sort of Courtney Love lost in the backwoods.

To a bemused but patient audience, McKee opened her set with some of the more scarred songs from Life Is Sweet, grinding out some twisted riffs from her electric guitar while the band followed behind. "Just getting it out of my system before I get too old," she quipped, after another sustained burst of screaming lead guitar. Keyboard player Bruce Brody maintained a calm, collected organ sound, which failed to neutralise the acidic wail of McKee's guitar or her frenzied, hyperactive vocal delivery.

Panic Beach, from McKee's focused first album, returned to more familiar territory, and her plaintive, cracked vocals almost succeeded in bringing us down on our knees. She didn't give us much chance, however, bundling us straight into a cover of an old Queen tune, I'm In Love With My Car Presumably this is part of McKee's obsession with 70's glam rock, and indeed, the songs from Life Is Sweet are heavily influenced by Ziggy Stardust era Bowie. When she performs them onstage, however, it sounds more like Tin Machine.

"Stay tuned for more masturbatory guitar licks," she joked, but by this time the joke was beginning to wear thin. A harrowing, cathartic rendition of I'm Not Listening saw McKee piling on the angst, using that beautiful, piercing voice to create something ugly and grating. "I'm glad I got that off my chest," she said, but forgot to ask if the audience minded being dumped on.

Scarlover and Absolutely Barking Stars were more exercises in sonic self indulgence, but if you stripped away the extremes of sound and vitriol, you'd be left with just the bare bones of a tune.

Only the encore of Life Is Sweet managed to strike a balance between rampant power and restrained passion, but by then it was too late - the tightrope had long since snapped.