Why is Mick Hucknall - a celebrity playboy and purveyor of white-boy soul to the suburbs - surrounding himself with Soviet iconography? His new album, Love and the Russian Winter, is so called, explains Mick, because that meteorological phenomenon saved the world from both Napoleon and Hitler. To some, the Simply Red crooner poses no less of a threat to civilisation: his lyrically vapid, honey-sodden pop has colonised Britain and infiltrated even No 10 and the dome.

The subtext of the Soviet connection - Hucknall's set suggests a vast Russian boxcar, whose corrugated wooden panels withdraw before a vista of twinkling stars - is that soul music, like all good revolutions, has eaten itself. Under the soul banner, Simply Red peddle muzak bereft of spirit or imagination, subsumed into commercial opportunism. Insofar as Hucknall meticulously reproduced his trademark pick'n'mix of reggae, R&B and lurve song his fans got their money's worth.

But no more than that. Hucknall betrays no personality on stage. His rich voice is sacrificed to the noise of 11 band-members stifling every song he sings. Hucknall begins Holding Back the Years alone on an acoustic guitar, but two verses in the band strikes up, smothering whatever frailty or feeling threatened to emerge. Elsewhere, the ruby-toothed one shimmies like an itching eel to Something Got Me Started, Money's Too Tight To Mention and a James Brown cover, Cold Sweat. There's no chance of working up a sweat here, however. Like a Russian winter, Simply Red live induces shivers.