Wonderful confusion and tender despair

However, The National's constantly fascinating 90-minute set should reassure anyone that this cult band emphatically have their own musical vision and they delivered it with total conviction.

Their current album Boxer is an impressive piece of work, and while frontman Matt Berninger was a little awkward on stage, their songs felt perfectly formed without any sense of routine creeping in.

Berninger's baritone was as melancholy as the controlled rhythms supplied by the band, and his lyrics were equally downbeat. "You might need me more than you think you will," he sang with tender desperation on Brainy, and he had the look of a man who's known defeat in his time. Yet this was a triumphant performance of equal talents, not least from The National's unofficial sixth member, Padma Newsome. He provides the orchestration on the band's records, and his job here was to add some emotional turbulence to the clanging guitars with his rhapsodic violin playing.

Berninger wasn't too chatty - "Say hello," someone demanded after a few songs - but he did show a certain dry humour. "This is for everybody who has to go to work tomorrow," he said of one song. "We get to sleep in."

Their music ranged from gentle to chaotic and sometimes just wonderfully confusing: surely no one else could write a rootsy yet funereal tune like Racing Like a Pro.

The cheers for the opening piano notes of Fake Empire confirmed its status as their signature tune. And the support act St Vincent's singer added her voice to the languid Green Gloves during the encore.

Berninger sometimes looked overwhelmed at the reaction, but he was trying to climb into the crowd by the end, despite describing himself as "not that athletic".

There was a grace and power to his band, though. Their songs may be rhythmically melancholy and lyrically downbeat - but I emerged feeling nothing less than euphoric.

Tonight (0208 354 3300).

The National, St VIncent
Shepherd's Bush Empire