“Let’s start the night with a singalong,” said Jason Mraz, arriving on stage solo, armed with an acoustic guitar and standing beneath a blinding blue light. A crowd as polite as the performer obliged, gently chanting the chorus to You and I Both from Mraz’s seven-year-old debut album, Waiting For My Rocket to Come.

Now 31, the Virginia-born singer/songwriter is an established star Stateside – his songs are radio staples, his hits covered on American Idoland his scruffy image recognisable enough to sell clothes for Gap. In Britain, he has threatened to break through several times, then fallen at the final hurdle. Released in May, his third album, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., entered the Billboard charts at No 3. Here, it has yet to make the Top 40.

Live, Mraz had a sunny disposition to match his music. Wearing jeans that had seen better days, a T-shirt and his trademark pork-pie hat, he smiled, told stories and cracked a joke about two muffins in an oven. A four-piece band snuck on for the summery new number Live High midway through which a trio of brass players appeared at the front of the crowd. The fan favourite Remedy (I Won’t Worry) was a fine, funk workout with languidly rapped lyrics that seamlessly sloped into Oasis’s Wonderwall. Some probably thought it was a nod to Jay-Z, but the steal has been in Mraz’s set for months.

Mind you, some of Jay-Z’s passion wouldn’t have gone amiss. There were no bad songs as such – though the one that sounded like Mambo No 5 came close – but several that fell into the category of inoffensive folk-pop, or could have passed for Jack Johnson album tracks. The new song If It Kills Me was a notable exception, with its perky percussion and eloquent, witty lyrics that recalled the Lemonheads’ best.

Yet it is likely to be either the tirelessly jaunty Make It Mineor the reggae-infused I’m Yours that proves to be Mraz’s breakthrough in Britain. The former was a trombone-accompanied blend of Wake Up Boo! and Matt Bianco, so best hope it’s the latter.

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