Richard Ashcroft - Guildhall, Portsmouth. 17/05/06.

I have to admit that I rarely attend gigs in large venues as I find them so souless and if it wasn't for the fact that I was working on the local crew again then I wouldn't be here, but it offers me a chance to pass comment on the odd big band so it would be churlish to pass up the opportunity.
Alas, I arrive back at the Guildhall later than planned and so only catch the last song and a half of support act Tiny Dancers who actually sound like they might be quite entertaining. I enjoyed their last song very much but you'll have to judge them for yourselves over on their MySpace page as I really didn't see enough to comment on.

On to the man himself, Richard Ashcroft who opens with Sonnet followed by recent single Music Is Power and to be honest I'm rather disappointed. Not sure what I was expecting, but the way he has been built up to be some great songwriter had me wanting a show with a spark to it and a singer oozing charisma, but I'm faced with a rather dull, mid paced 'Dad rock' set that just plods along until the fifth song kicks in. Drugs Don't Work is the first song of the night that really engages the audience, half of whom so far have been far more interested in holding conversations than actually watching the gig and then it drifts back into ordinary mode with Science Of Silence and Sweet Brother Malcolm before New York sees a spark of energy and life creep into the set, a much needed boost to keep us awake. Lucky Man closes the set and of course, everyone knows this one so the place erupts and sings along and you kind of realise at this point that when he hits the spot, he really hits the spot with good tunes, it's just unfortunate that 80% of the material is so pedestrian that it just floats by unnoticed.
Richard appears for the encore and treats us to a solo with Check The Meaning , just him and a drum machine before the band rejoin him to round off with Space & Time, Lonely Soul, BTN With Colour and the tune we've all been waiting for, Bitter Sweet Symphony which does sound wonderful in fairness but you do wonder just how many people were here just to hear those couple of Verve tunes.

Can't say I'll be rushing out to get any of his material, other than a couple of obvious highlights tonight, I found the whole set rather average and safe, the kind of stuff you will hear on Radio 2 during the day. I'm positive that a fair few will disagree, but having watched the audience as much as the man himself, it's clear that a large percentage had little interest other than hearing those big hits and with fairly little interaction with the crowd it all came over as rather dull.