You get the impression, watching Nitin Sawhney live, that he has passed through the dark night of the soul that was 2003's Human album. The serious, semi-autobiographical songs are banished in favour of older, groovy material, along with tunes from the frothy new album, Philtre.

He may be in a good mood, but Sawhney is as shy and retiring and ever. Hunched behind his piano, he occasionally glances nervously up at the audience, as if to reassure himself that they are having a good time. He also glances - with an expression of glassy-eyed admiration - at the various singers who troop onto the stage to bring his songs to life. These include the R&B-flavoured vocalists Sharon Duncan and Taio, and the Asian human beatbox singer Jason Singh, who astonishes the audience with superhuman displays of percussive chanting.

Sawhney has long promoted himself as a maverick artist who is always pushing the envelope. In truth, though, he is an open-minded formula man. Tonight that formula was much in evidence, with colliding Latin, Indian, African and British urban sounds and styles providing the backdrop for some solid, mainstream pop songs. A new tune called Journey sounded uncannily like a would-be Lisa Stansfield drum'n'bass outing, while many other numbers featured the kind of polite jazz-soul beloved of less hip artists such as Cleveland Watkiss.

The textures and orchestration of Sawhney's songs are often beguiling. Asian strings cut like knife strokes into the verses of Dead Man, while an acoustically rendered Immigrant sounds like a sunbeam translated into sound. But there is a preponderance of slightly bland, slower material that doesn't quite sit with the audience's evident desire to party. In all honesty, Sawhney's music is probably best appreciated while lounging on a hammock on a beach in Thailand. On an unexpectedly dark and wintry evening in Manchester, it doesn't get your pulse racing quite as much as you'd hope.

· At Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, tonight. Box office: 0151-709 3789. Then touring.