Sheryl Crow, Scala, London

Sometimes even cowgirls get the blues

"You guys are so close you can see my nose hair !" says Crow. But as her sleeveless denim waistcoat is unbuttoned to the naval, us guys are otherwise distracted. The Missouri-born singer's clothes and tomboyish persona conjure memories of Daisy from The Dukes of Hazzard, and when she swaps her fat Gibson acoustic for a bass, she moves like Suzi Quatro. Feisty? Just a bit. Tonight's encore is a storming take on Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times".

This gig is Crow's first in London for four years. She's here to promote C'mon, C'mon, the follow-up to her 1998 Grammy-winning album The Globe Sessions.

The 40-year-old's new record has been engineered to sell truckloads, its tunes radio-friendly and its guest-list brimming with celebrity friends. The Eagles' Don Henley duets on "It's So Easy", Stevie Nicks appears in the title track, and Gwyneth Paltrow, Lenny Kravitz and Emmylou Harris sing elsewhere. Marketing wise, it's multiply and saturate rather than divide and rule.

At it's best, C'mon, C'mon, casts Crow as a worthy keeper of the Seventies country-rock flame, her love of The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac more transparent than ever. It's a mixed bag, however, and throwaway tracks such as "Lucky Kid" – the damp squib of this gig – are a reminder of this new album's difficult gestation period.

Crow has said that it was depression that temporarily stymied her creative flow, but thankfully her mood tonight is exuberant and jocular. "Jimbo's a great singer," she says, when on "You're An Original" her drummer handles Lenny Kravitz's vocal part, "but he doesn't have Lenny's ass !"

With the absence of Don Henley making "It's So Easy" a no-go live (and if that song doesn't make the US Top Ten I'll eat my copy of Hotel California), the best of the new songs is "C'mon, C'mon" itself, with one of Crow's guitarists stepping in to cover the vocal part that Stevie Nicks sings on the album. With an intro redolent of early Rod Stewart and clever bridges to the chorus, it's a beautifully constructed song; its "Break my heart again for old time's sake" lyric alluding to similarities in Crow's and Nicks's love lives that are too complicated to go into here.

Crow is obviously glad to be performing again and sings well throughout, but in places the dangers of recording an album featuring an all-star cast then playing live without them become apparent. Early days on those newies, of course, but tonight, it's oldies such as "All I Wanna Do" and "Run Baby Run" that remind you why Crow is every celebrity's favourite cowgirl.