Brian Fallon & The Howling Weather @ O2 Ritz, Manchester, 21 Feb

Swimming the mainstream is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time: not impossible, but tough to get right whilst maintaining your dignity. Brian Fallon, who first shot to fame about ten years ago as the singer with The Gaslight Anthem, tries his best with it, but you can see that he struggles.

He's run away from the straight line of continuing to release albums with the band, but then got them back together for 'tenth anniversary album shows'. He bristles at Bruce Springsteen associations (The Boss has played with The Gaslight Anthem and brought Fallon on-stage to sing with the E Street Band many times), but texts the superstar during this show to tell us he has his number. True, it's all good fun, but he runs the risk of presenting his art as a job, not something that he obsesses over.

Tom Waits nearly swam the mainstream at the start of his career and it's his melodic, shaggy-dog story early path that Fallon follows – but armed with an electric guitar, not a piano. The songs are good, the singing is great (like early Waits but up ten octaves) and the band pass muster. But something truly great is missing. The songs tend to follow the same path and Fallon's cracking voice can only wrestle so many melodies out of well-worn chord sequences. Solo tunes such as Forget Me Not, Painkillers and Sleepwalkers stand out, but it's a funereal take of The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound that threatens to blow the roof off the place and is the night's biggest mass singalong. Go figure.

Fallon is back in Manchester later this year with The Gaslight Anthem and this sold-out crowd will certainly all be there at the bigger venues the band are booked into. Maybe it'll be the shot in the arm he needs to truly step out of the shadows.