With his unkempt beard, red guitar, red shirt, red baseball cap, red handkerchief and Klingon-scale forehead, Will Oldham, aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, is no stranger to strangeness.

Yet, unlike the similarly bearded fellow backwoodsman, Ray LaMontagne, Oldham is a deadpan wit and raconteur, pricking the balloon of pomposity that surrounds Americana.

Hence, then, not merely a cheery refusal to play someone's wedding (a request delivered with significantly less irony than it was received), the throwing of two £5 notes at his keyboardist and a lengthy search for a missing plectrum, but tales of James Brown, Steve Irwin, Anna Nicole Smith and losing his trousers on stage in Israel: "I wanted to see if they were really, really anti pork. They were."

Yet, once the music assumed control, the mood darkened as Oldham explored the outer reaches of his genre.

For more than two hours, he and his four helpers eased from the keyboards-powered symphonic squall of Master and Everyone to the spartan Ease Down The Road, which segued into Willie Nelson's On the Road Again.

Along the way, they broke neither their stride, nor the reverent atmosphere until the between-song joviality.

A cult treat.