Through the dazzle of the lightshow and the swirl of dry ice, it's hard to tell how many people are coming and going across the stage. Massive Attack grew out of a sound system, possibly the most spontaneous and democratic grouping of musicians possible, and have become a de facto pop group, albeit one now led by resolute non-star 3D. So while surviving founding member Daddy G hangs about, offering the odd vocal interjection and generally looking spare, it's around 3D that the largely anonymous gaggle of back-up players coalesce.

It's an unenviable position: left in the wake of a string of charismatic performers (Tricky, Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, etc) who came and went with each album, he has a lot to carry.

Massive Attack were at their best when mapping out a future for British soul on their debut album, Blue Lines. They've grown progressively whiter (losing Nelson, Tricky and founding member Mushroom) and less interesting. It's telling that the three most powerful songs tonight are Safe From Harm, Hymn of the Big Wheel and the still overwhelming Unfinished Sympathy, all from Blue Lines and almost 15 years old. They're presented in passable but pallid versions, with Hazel Fernandez replacing Nelson. At least Horace Andy, a man with a voice like curls of silver leaf falling from a bright blue sky, is here to send Big Wheel soaring.

Unforgivable, however, is Dot Allison's turn as Fraser. Teardrop is among the most exquisite songs to survive the 1990s, and she massacres it, failing to hit most of the notes, offering a sub-Dannii Minogue drizzle in place of Fraser's sensual otherness.

When 3D himself takes the mic, his raps are barely audible, his between-song politicising mumbled. The music sulks and pouts, straining for gravity, hitting onerous and ponderous on the way to sonorous. The largely tuneless current album's songs are virtually indistinguishable from much of its predecessor. How dated this pre-millennial gothic seems already.