There was once an excuse for thinking that a musician with a name like Keith Urban must have come along to show punk-ass rappers like Jay-Z what hip-hop was all about. No longer. As every Heat reader now knows, Urban is a country-singing Australian who is top dog in Nashville, husband to Nicole Kidman and recent patient at a Tennessee rehab clinic. He is also a three-time winner of the Country Music Association's male vocalist of the year, and at home could have filled a place the size of the Empire five times over.

His considerable musical success doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the UK, where he is primarily known as Kidman's consort. And on the evidence of tonight, it is hard to picture him as the arena act he clearly wants to be. Despite tailoring his long, long show for a Brit crowd - less hayseed twangery and more riffy rock - and throwing heroic frontman shapes, he can't change the fact that there is no call for it here until Bryan Adams retires.

Urban offered a package of components that, when assembled, produced mainstream rock with just enough country references to mollify longtime fans (that would be the whole audience, apparently). The blandness was mystifying - here's a guy with the bumpy personal life that makes for classic country lamentations (dedicating Got it Right This Time to "my wife", he thanked everyone for their "love and support these last six months"), yet such things barely figured in the music, much of which came from the current album, Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing. So where was the charisma that persuaded a Hollywood star to marry him? It wasn't anywhere around here, where the only bit of flair was the Persian carpet he stood on. Bryan Adams can relax - Keith Suburban is no threat.

· At Academy 2, Manchester, tonight. Box office: 0161-275 2930.