One of the things that made the Verve such a great band -and such a great live band - was the way Nick McCabe could wring an enormous sound from his guitar without clogging up the songs. It was a huge, powerful noise, but also delicate and full of space.

Since the band's split in the wake of multimillion-selling album Urban Hymns in 1999, this is something with which Richard Ashcroft has clearly struggled. Unfortunately, he and producer Chris Potter seem to have attempted to recreate the Verve's massive surround-sound by burying songs in big, ungainly, layered arrangements and superpolished studio trickery. The songs are often too slight to bear the weight; they can't breathe.

This gig is a comparatively small show for Ashcroft. The venue is heaving, and he can clearly do little wrong: the audience clap even when his guitar strap slips. But the Astoria has unremittingly rotten sound, a thuddy, muddy wash that can make the sprightliest song seem turgid. For much of the night, the only structure in the set is provided by the inclusion of old songs; the bulk of the new material, from forthcoming solo album Human Conditions, is mid-to-slow paced. Cast into the dank well of the Astoria's PA, it sounds dismal.

Pointlessly, there are eight people on stage. Songs grind on, suffering terrible longueurs. Musicians hack away, and you wonder, since we can't hear them, whether they can hear themselves. Talvin Singh makes a gratuitous cameo during new single Check the Meaning - a song that seems to have forgotten that it needs a chorus - and barely a few seconds of his frantic tabla-playing surface in a random bubble of sound. Underneath it all, the pedestrian plod of these thin but intensely self-regarding songs groans.

Then, for a moment, there is real magic. Ashcroft, alone, plays the Verve's hit The Drugs Don't Work on acoustic guitar. It remains his best song, and gets the biggest cheer of the night. Written for his dying father, it contains the intensely moving lines: "If you want a show/Just let me know/And I'll sing in your ear again." That's all he needs: a simple connection. Less really would be more.