Gemma Hayes, Komedia, Brighton <br></br>eX-Girl, Spitz, London <br></br>Chicks on Speed, Garage, London <br></br>Patti Smith, Union Chapel, London

You're winsome, you lose some...

I saw seven nuns stalking the streets of Brighton this afternoon. Or perhaps they were just people dressed up as nuns, which – to paraphrase Steven Wright's great line about cops – is all nuns are anyway. In any case, I took it as a portent: the Dark Ages are in town, and they've come mob-handed.

The other week, Julie Burchill got into trouble for listing the things she hated about Eire. I'm not sure whether she mentioned twee, emotionally-repressed female folk singers, but she might well have done. As if in a conscious act of provocation, Gemma Hayes, the twee twentysomething from Tipperary who, with the kind of bovine predictability which makes you want to stove your own skull in with an anvil, has been nominated for this year's Mercury prize and has invaded Julie's home town to play Julie's favourite venue.

"Isn't she cute?" whispers the placid casualty next to me, possibly a nun, probably not a Burchill. Sure, if you're a sucker. Hayes's shy little waif act is as coy and knowing, in its way, as the most seasoned pro. She's all self-deprecation and false modesty, looking bashfully through her fringe like Princess Di on Panorama, coughing daintily on-mic (on-mic, you notice), saying "Sorry" mid-song, and politely asking, "Can I get my vocal turned up?" (A Gemma Hayes gig is so quiet that when I click the retractor on my ballpoint, it drowns out the applause).

She's not so bashful, of course, that she doesn't mention that her debut album is up for the Mercury. (If anyone other than The Streets, The Coral or Ms Dynamite gets the gong, that award's last speckle of credibility will evaporate).

The neck-up, waist-down mortuary cases who decide these things doubtless admire Hayes for her "finely crafted songs" by which they mean songs which contain waltz times and sixths and sevenths and hey, let's go crazy and throw in an eighth (no, hang on, that's an octave).

Gemma Hayes is a less militant Suzanne Vega (I know, but try hard and you'll get there), who isn't above ripping off Joni ("Stop The Wheel" is a rewrite of Mitchell's "The Circle Game"), and whose countrified yodels and Western vowels are aimed squarely at shifting US units. Her songs, described by some as "harrowing", are instead paeans to patheticness, whimpering that she's "scared of feeling small and looking tall" and pleading for someone to "love me with your head and heart, love me like a child, love me when I'm wild..." (when might that be?). Hayes may charm her way to the prize, but ultimately, winsomeness is for losers.

Mainstream acceptance is somewhat lower down the agenda of some female artists. On a small stage in Spitalfields, something truly bizarre is happening. Three giant white caterpillars are performing a mime in which they pupate, chrysalise and crack open to become ... well, eX-Girl.

Japanese girl groups, typically, tend towards the retro (Shonen Knife: 1960s; 5-6-7-8's: 1950s). In this respect, eX-Girl are uniquely futuristic. I don't just mean their silver foil mini dresses, white boots or regular exhortations to "come into outer space" (they claim, you see, to come from the planet Kero Kero). I'm talking about their truly bizarre and inspired mix of musical styles past, present and yet-to-be-invented. With their Sanrio-style merchandise and comedy costumes (they encore in frog masks), eX-Girl could be dismissed as a kitsch distraction, but Kirilo, the multi-instrumentalist with the space-age Flying V bass, Keiko, the newcomer on guitar, and Fuzuki, the drummer who stands up throughout (as all cool drummers should), have fashioned a whole new genre: Prog Fairywing.

Across town in Highbury, Chicks on Speed, who take the stage in big white T-shirts with day-glo slogans of the kind last seen in the "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" video, urging us not to Choose Life but, sarcastically, to buy Canon, Mitsubishi and BMW, and deliver a brief lecture to the effect that companies like Enron and WorldCom "rob, cheat and defraud at will" (a touch of stating-the-obvious, but CoS are accustomed to American audiences).

A multi-national trio (oh, the irony) whose corporate masthead would read New York – Munich – Sydney, Chicks on Speed are a Situationist Bananarama, and they deal in the politics of parody. Even their faces – mouths painted far beyond the boundaries of the lips, eyes streaked with crude slashes of neon – are parodies of femininity.

CoS specialise in brutal electronic pop of the Peaches variety, and their defiant lipsynch act often falls into chaos when a DAT misfires. A sceptic might quip that Riot Grrl has come a long way in 10 years: from women who can't play guitars properly to women who can't operate synthesisers properly. And the sceptic might have a point. But the Chicks trump the critics by chanting the mantra "We Don't Play Guitars" over a slinky house track superior to anything the 1992 generation ever scratched out on a six-string.

Chicks on Speed are the closing act at Ladyfest, the four-day London festival of post-Riot Grrl culture which aims "to build a sense of community among female artists, activists and audiences", incorporating everything from a Lucy O'Brien lecture on Girl Power to an all-female DJ workshop, and gigs headlined by Electrelane and Katastrophy Wife, side project of Babes In Toyland's Kat Bjelland.

I miss the latter, because, as chance would have it, the woman who inspired the whole damn thing is playing a stone's throw away. There's a certain irony in the woman who sang "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" performing in the house of the Lord, but Patti Smith has earned a degree of leeway. The show is a benefit for the Union Chapel Restoration Fund, and is punctuated by game attempts to auction items to raise money for fixing the roof.

The semi-acoustic band, featuring her son Jackson, are nowhere near as rockin' as the line-up who played the Ocean last year, and a shambolic and patronising version of Ralph McTell's "Streets of London" is a low point, but crowdpleasers like "Frederick", "Because the Night" and "Gloria" compensate.

One punter offers £250 for a signed roof slate, if she'll support Irish independence. "I support independence for everyone," Patti retorts. "And you know what? Conditional offers are bullshit." I consider pointing out that if she really wanted to help, Patti could always make a start by climbing up and putting the slate back, but think better of it.

s.price@independent.co.uk

Gemma Hayes: V2002, Weston Park, Staffordshire (0870 120 2002), 18 August