Tall, avuncular and with the reassuringly tweedy air of a financially insecure Kelsey Grammar, James Yorkston is the quietly rising future of folk-tinged British songwriters.

While still a member of East Neuk's Fence Collective, a loose conglomeration of songwriterly souls that also spawned KT Tunstall, King Creosote and The Beta Band, Yorkston's forthcoming album, When The Haar Rolls In, is the fifth of a fascinating career.

If the Roundhouse, with tables on the floor and curtains hiding the emptiness of the upper levels, was a challenging venue, Yorkston proved to be a wry old soul, blessed with a line in tall tales ("I recently stayed in a cottage with Robert Plant and Van The Man: oh, the laughs we had") and a tendency to giggle mid-song.

His songs may initially appear unassuming but they benefited immensely from a grandiose, widescreen approach. Indeed, so personalised is Yorkston's take on folk that the sparser and more "real" things were, the more he struggled to evade the ordinary. Lucky then, that clarinet (particularly the solo on Cheating The Game), violin and accordion helped add layers of loveliness to the drumless The Brussels Rambler and the more urgent Shipwreckers.

If these rich pickings were Yorkston's past remodelled, the new songs blossomed. The version of Lal Waterson's Midnight Feast was part sea-shanty, part punky singalong, but When The Haar Rolls In's title track was a lengthy trawl across what Yorkston does best: literary lyrics, a slow-burning start that evolved into something rather stately, followed by a clattering, skew-whiff climax.

For all Yorkston's likeabilty, his band's joyous musicality and their willingness to push the boundaries of what can be a staid genre, a potentially glorious spectacle was too often reduced to deluxe busking, leading to congeniality rather than passion.