He has the rotting name and the hermit lifestyle: all that's missing is the Addams sense of theatre. There is no movement to spice up Sugar beyond Mould's lumbering and stumbling, no light show to speak of, and for that matter no speaking either. Sugar do not utter a word until the final, muffled thank-you. I would have preferred a bit more engagement with the audience.

Mould doesn't give a damn what anyone would have preferred.Similarly influential is J J Cale, who brought his five- piece band to the Hammersmith Apollo after a gap of 18 years - a long time in pop music, but not long at all in Cale's neck of the woods. If Keith Richards swapped his swagger for a stroll, he would look like Cale, and with singing lessons he could sound like him, too. The Oklahoma singer-guitarist has dispensed with his customary shades, but not his cool. The drawback of this is that a game of Name That Tune would be tricky. 'Cocaine' elicits applause from the first notes of its classic rock riff, but more typical is 'After Midnight' - another song made famous by Eric Clapton - for which the fanatical cheering does not begin until the vocals do Most of the evening is one long groove of R&B. And you'd have the blues, too, if you'd been ripped off so blatantly by Dire Straits and Chris Rea..