Lady Gaga live review: London's artRAVE is equally compelling and lacking

There's still little doubt that Lady Gaga remains one of the most compelling forces working in pop music today. But something has happened.

As the gloved hand of her global reach clawed out ever further after its Born This Way pinnacle, her fanbase actually retracted and the casual pop fan stopped paying as much attention.

So tonight at The O2 we find ourselves in the curious situation of the world's largest, most in-plain-sight secret society, as 'artRAVE: The Artpop Ball' arrives in the capital. Nobody's going to sniff at three nights at London's flagship enormodome, but here are Gaga diehards only. There just happens to be an awful lot of them. If that makes it an even more intense experience than before, the problem here is that she's touring a bit of a duff record, and she knows it.

Why else would Gaga make such a long and pointed speech – frankly concerning you somewhat for her welfare – where she lists all of her hit singles in order, rages that if we're just here to hear the hits we may as well go to the bar, and implores how we all here are artists and tonight is dedicated to all the works we have yet to create? Everyone likes a bit of feist, but it's an extraordinarily defensive manner in which to open your show.

This is despite having front-loaded the set with five songs from ARTPOP that aren't going to figure in many people's Gaga top tens. Yet if the only reasonable response to that is, 'Mate, I just wanted to hear some pop songs', then she knows that as well. Because then, firing off into 'Just Dance', followed by admittedly truncated versions of 'Poker Face' and 'Telephone', we're away, into a gleaming 'Paparazzi' and ARTPOP's masterpiece, 'Do What U Want', thankfully free of R. Kelly. 'ArtRAVE' is as magical and imaginative a place as ever, but never has the adage, 'it's the hits, dummy' rung more true.

The solo piano bit arrives ('Dope' and 'Yoü and I'), and Gaga reads out letters from fans who have gone through struggles – her catch-all selection struggles now covering everything from ambivalent sexuality to depression to substance addiction to very likely Ebola before long.

Gaga's detractors will continue to call this cynical marketing of other people's problems. But when she brings one of these people, Sarah, up on stage with her, Sarah certainly doesn't think that. And what's more, Gaga holds her hands up to her own struggles with self-medication. As she works through a jazzed-down piano rip of 'Born This Way', you're reminded of the power that still lies in saying the obvious in a world where the obvious doesn't tend to get said enough.

It used to be unsayable that the best thing Lady Gaga could do at *whatever* juncture would be a stripped-down, piano-and-vocal record. But now, it's become a bloody cliché. When it's just her and a piano, it's cripplingly good.

That said, the twin failure of ARTPOP is that while the songs are underwhelming, the production design from the Haus Of Gaga is losing its touch as well. For evidence of that, you only have to look at her final outfit of the night, something approaching the cheerleading twins from Pat Sharp's Fun House after being roughed up in a late nineties Megadog rave. It's just become all a bit... why, though?

'Alejandro' reminds you that even Gaga's mid-table songs still out-bang most people's, and 'Bad Romance' is still good enough for her to dine out on the nostalgia circuit forever. It's to her eternal credit that she doesn't want that, but something here needs a rethink.

'Do we want to see the girl behind the aura?' she asks on one of ARTPOP's better cuts. Yes, Gaga, we do. Desperately.