The climate change awareness festival SHIFT was not overburdened with celebrity supporters. But this “maritime evening” of songs, led by former Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock, benefited from a certain eccentricity.

In 2008, Hitchcock joined KT Tunstall on environmental campaign group Cape Farewell’s Arctic expedition, and SHIFT was the musicians’ artistic response.

Hitchcock opened with a “rock and roll sea shanty” and then delivered a rousing take on Martin Carthy’s Polly on the Shore. “All these songs were written near or with the aid of liquid,” said the silver-haired singer, who was prone to strange soliloquies about the Eighties and giant crabs.

A heavily pregnant Kathryn Williams told us that her baby was kicking, though it didn’t hinder her emotive, folky voice. Blur guitarist Graham Coxon joined in, too, and sang his own art-rock treat Caspian Sea.

But it was Tunstall fresh from finishing her album, who brought star quality. Purposefully strumming her acoustic guitar, she debuted a likely hit — written during a boat trip to Uummannaq, Greenland — alongside a stark, haunting effort from the perspective of a hunted whale.

The mass singalong for the encore was the one predictable element in a show devoid of preaching or posturing. In fact, the only obvious eco-anthem was There Goes the Ice, sung by Hitchcock and Tunstall and accompanied by giant images from their inspirational Arctic journey.