An off-beat world

Laurie Anderson's breathy electro-pop single Oh! Superman landed in the UK Top 10 in the late 70s, a surprise intruder from the New York art scene. Nearly 30 years later, the singer is an attractively gamine, androgynous figure at a small table of equipment on the darkened stage of the Barbican.

Her career is built on skills as a storyteller and a choreographer of sophisticated electronic sound effects and lighting. But in the wake of 9/11, the "multimediatrix" has downsized.

She opened the show playing a jagged reel on an electrified violin, then entered her dream world, talking through a customised microphone. Long, drawled, deadpan intonations and husky, between-the-sexes tones created a slow, intimate, conversational mood, a medium for a flow of stories.

Anderson's vignettes are humorous, poignant, painful, universal and more personal than before. For years she has tried to make sense of America from within her Manhattan eyrie in an un-American city. She continues her quest - on a zen canoeing retreat; living with a dysfunctional Amish

family; working at McDonald's; in childhood memories of hospital, listening to "the sounds of dying children"; and in an hilariously surreal story about her brother's parrot. The wider world intruded in musings about the disappearances of bin Laden and Saddam and their new guise as ghosts and the destructiveness of consumerism.

Memory is a primary concern: through memories we create our sense of self; stories tell us who we are, she intones. Her performances are investigations. But that intensity is balanced by her droll, surreal and off-beat world view and skills as a stand-up comic. She is also, of course, a musician, and sound is crucial to every situation: she recalls seeing the Twin Towers rise, behind wraps, in silence, and collapse - on TV, with no soundtrack. But the musical variety did not match the diversity of the stories.

At 90 minutes, the show was a tad long, but those extra minutes offered a chance to float off in a surreal mist. "Take my days and scatter them around," she crooned, and as we watched, she talked fragments of her life back into being, then dispersed them like smoke.

Until 11 May. Box office: 020 7638 8891.