As a performer, Pete Doherty comes with so much baggage, it’s a wonder the stage isn’t scattered with battered suitcases, the secondhand piano he had to beg back off Kate Moss, random etchings in dried blood and penalty points for erratic driving. In fact, the only props are a pair of standard lamps with 1970s suburban shades, and the only trace of the damaged, drug-addled Doherty of tabloid fame is a big bunch of mates allowed to loll about a few feet from the band.

The preshow worry of “will he/won’t he turn up?” has gone, but has taken with it some of the sense of occasion of past appearances. Babyshambles no longer amble to their instruments, they stride, a full five minutes earlier than billed. Doherty looks clean in every sense – his shirt is crisp and bright white, his high-waisted trousers perfectly pressed and his black tie yanked down just enough to stop short of smart. His omnipresent porkpie hat hides only his hair – his baby face is in full view and, heavens, he’s smiling.

The crowd hasn’t changed much – drunk boys dressed as Doherty, groups of girls awed by the presence of a proper pop poet, and a mosh pit that extends halfway to the back of the hall. Ten seconds into the messy opener, Carry on up the Morning, the chanting starts. The catchy, Kinksy Delivery is met by mass bouncing, and by the end of Beg, Steal or Borrow, a jaunty track with neat drumbeats and tunefully chiming guitars, the audience has surged so far forward, a sweetly concerned Doherty requests calm and pleads with people to take a step back. When a security guard has a word with him a few minutes later, the singer turns positively parental, saying that the show will stop if the surging doesn’t. Taken aback, fans boo.

The release of Babyshambles’s second album, Shotter’s Nation, last September proved that, musically, the band are far from a spent force. Live, with the recent addition of a keyboard player, they are tight, but too often lack bite. Unstookie Titled is given an extended instrumental outro that rambles on directionlessly; where they should be punchy, they make do with perky, and the lack of a definitive, distinctive Babyshambles sound isn’t helped by Doherty’s muffled vocals.

Yet five years of bands trying to ape his iconic old act, the Libertines, have sent the singer in search of new inspiration, and he hits the pop bull’s-eye with the pretty, preppy UnBiloTitled, while a friskily paced Blinding is given a funky country-rock makeover. Tracks from the band’s ludicrously patchy debut album, Down in Albion (2005), are all excellent – Pipedown is sharp and snappy, Killamangiro a boisterous, joyful encore-opener that just pips the closer, Albion, as the night’s highlight.

Yet, for all the crowd’s excitement, it was only in the encore that Babyshambles truly thrilled. Where once Doherty threw himself around with abandon and effortlessly oozed charisma, now he seems unsure of himself. One attempt to dance was abandoned and, when he finally ditched his guitar, undid his tie and took to striding across the stage, he couldn’t decide what to do with his hands. In the end, one went in his pocket, the other behind his back.

With no prospect of a punch-up, no rehab curfews begging to be broken and the only bad behaviour happening off stage, Babyshambles need music with more edge or fans will look for their fun elsewhere.

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