Richard Ashcroft, King's College, London

The plugs don't work

Skinny legs, black-leather jacket, shaggy hair, shades... on stage, Richard Ashcroft (pictured) still looks every inch the rock frontman - think Jagger or Lennon auditioning for the Ramones. His grandiose tenor is still great, and he has a new champion - Chris Martin, who introduced Ashcroft and "Bittersweet Symphony" to the Live 8 crowd with the words, "This is the best song ever written, sung by the best singer in the world."

The former Verve singer steps out on an arena tour with Coldplay this week and has a new solo album - his third, but first for three years - released in January. At Wednesday night's 500-capacity warm-up show, Ashcroft launched straight into "Lucky Man" and swaggered around as if he'd never been away.

He infused new material with a vigour mostly lacking in the over-produced album versions (the new single, "Break the Night With Colour", sounds like an indie Robbie Williams); he thanked the assembled core fanbase for the "patience and respect" they've shown him while he's been away; and he played Verve songs as if they'd been written yesterday.

But the problems with Ashcroft have not changed either. His lyrics still often try too hard to answer the big questions; his play-it-safe solo albums never contain more than four or five killer songs; and the punky edge that he has no problem producing live is still struggling to make itself heard on record.

As tonight and Live 8 prove, there is now a generation of twentysomethings to whom Ashcroft provided a rock'n'roll awakening - this is the man who dared to tell fans "The Drugs Don't Work" precisely at the time the majority were trying to discover that truth for themselves. But whether nostalgic goodwill is more important to this generation than the need for consistently strong new product, only the coming months will tell.