Los Angeles seems to have a polarising effect upon the British rock stars who move there. Some huddle with their fellow ex-pat musicians like retired couples on the Costa del Sol, decorating their mansions with UK ephemera and playing five-a-side football. Others go native, adopting faddish new-age philosophies and celebrating their new surroundings in song.

Anyone wondering which category Charlatans vocalist and Hollywood resident Tim Burgess falls into has their answer within seconds of his arrival on stage. His opening song offers the chorus, "I believe in California soul", to a backing audibly influenced by alt-country heroes Lambchop. He makes disparaging remarks about London: "This bohemian, cosmopolitan city, according to Time Out." And he wears a Stetson. He could appear more immersed in American culture, but it would involve smoking a corncob pipe, chugging a jug of moonshine and playing the Stars and Stripes For Ever on a banjo.

While it's nice to know that Burgess is enjoying life Stateside, there's something unsatisfying about his material. There is a distinct lack of memorable tunes and a surfeit of cliched lyrics amid the pedal steel guitars and blaring trumpets, as well as other, more complex difficulties. Still resolutely a product of north west England, Burgess's voice sits uncomfortably atop the country-soul backing: when he attempts a soulful falsetto, he recalls not Curtis Mayfield but "squeaky" Joe Pasquale.

In fact, the problem may be rooted less in his choice of genres than in the deadly earnestness with which he embraces them. Burgess ignores rather than addresses the cultural gulf between his background and his current enthusiasm for Americana. With the best will in the world, the spectacle of a man from Cheshire ploughing his way through an autobiographical song called Po' Boy Soul without a flicker of irony is bound to look affected and self-indulgent, regardless of his current home address.