The miserablist-songwriter guise is the last refuge of people who can't get a date, which may well have played a part in Stephen Fretwell's decision to take up the guitar. Apologies to him if, offstage, he is the Rod Stewart of Salford, but his public persona is that of achingly raw loner.

Ragged-haired and morose, he exerts his gloom on a roomful of people who passed up Desperate Housewives to be here, and the effect is magical. Within a couple of songs, faces are mirroring the despondency of his own, and the collective serotonin level plummets.

After touring with Keane last year, Fretwell has picked up enough of an audience to nearly sell out this show, and there is a comfortingly fraternal feeling to be had from standing in the midst of so much glumness. It's all too much, though, for a group of Fretwell's hometown friends, who raucously chivvy him along with: "Come on, Steve!" Is that any way to address a man who cowers behind his guitar as he sings: "It's fallen through, what can I do"?

Fretwell's weakness is that, while he writes an appealing tune (his album, Magpie, makes satisfying hangover listening), on stage he has yet to establish exactly who he is. He strums, he rasps and then he does it again, and only the strongest songs - the huge, languid Lost Without You; a choked-up Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me - present him as anything but a Dylan-Springsteen-Gray sandwich.

It's easy to see why he complemented Keane, though: huddled inside his denim jacket, he must have cut a vulnerable figure on the big stages that now host the band. He certainly does here. All he needs to do now is find his own voice.