Since I Saw You Last is the name of Gary Barlow's current album, and therefore also this arena tour. If it feels like a wink-wink title, it's because the recently retired X Factor judge has been unavoidable since 2006, and deservedly so: the Take That comeback upended the laws of boy-band thermodynamics by making the reconditioned version even hotter than the original. Barlow is dapper, self-deprecating and approachably handsome: a more jubilee-compatible Bublé.
This slick, two-hour solo show is stuffed to the gunwales with songs, or at least bits of them finessed into medleys, but Barlow – leading a nine-piece band from his piano – is a skilled musical satnav, signposting any musical detours for the audience and generally being a genial, unhurried host. Perhaps wisely in this context, he doesn't mention that the rousing Greatest Day has been reworked into England's World Cup song, and gets the crowd onside early doors with a silly solo dance routine for Pray.
There is a video duet with Elton John for the dual-piano stomp of Face to Face but other new songs are deployed more cautiously, cushioned by a bubble-wrap of road-tested hits and remodelled Take That classics – fair enough, since Barlow wrote them all. He sings A Million Love Songs to a lucky megafan, then scoops her up for a chaste waltz. He also graciously cedes the spotlight to a local school choir for jubilee No 1 Sing. In this context, not being on Team GB seems a little churlish.
But with the audience so clearly in the palm of his hand, you wish Barlow would indulge himself more. When he does briefly go off-piste, introducing Lie to Me from his dead-on-arrival second album, it feels like a glimpse at another timeline, one where slinkiness displaced his current songwriting mode of stridency and swell.
At Arena, Leeds (0871 220 0260) 3 April, and O2, London (0871 220 0260) 5 and 6 April, then touring.
