When, late last year, an acoustic folk song called Come Home appeared on a TV credit card ad, its creator was assumed to be a typical new addition to the current canon of sensitive singer/ songwriters. Yet the Yorkshire-born Findlay Brown is an infinitely more interesting prospect. His debut album, Separated by the Sea, was packed with tender odes to an ex-girlfriend, but they are also steeped in psychedelia, awash with Gothic imagery and capable of mixing melancholic moods with sprightly, toe-tapping tunes.

Brown certainly didn’t look like a sensitive soul here. Tall, lanky but muscular, and clad in a jauntily-angled tweed cap, plaid shirt, jeans and polished winklepickers, he could have passed for a 4x4-driving farmer. At least until he started to sing.

Two opening solo numbers, the album’s title track and Come Home, set his warm, captivating vocals to intricate acoustic guitar, and by the time Brown had opened his eyes midway through the latter, a chatty crowd had been silenced and were creeping towards him as though to bask in his sweetness.

A colourful CV suggests that the singer’s teenage years were spent in a haze of Hendrix and that he once earned a crust as a bare-knuckle boxer. True or not, Brown’s band proved that he keeps strange company. A young, bearded trio included a long-haired guitarist ripe for a Woodstock revival and a percussionist who arrived on stage lacing up his shoes and spent more time slapping his thighs and shaking maracas than banging his bongos.

Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and Crosby, Stills, Nash were prominent reference points for Brown’s beautifully broody songs, which lifted the country quotient as the set progressed. Down Among the Dead Men set a C&W twang to eerie atmospherics; Captain Beefheart’s I’m Glad became a Johnny Cash-borrowing ballad; and Losing the Will to Survive pulled Simon & Garfunkel’s trick of livening up morose lyrics with a pretty pop melody.

The evening ended with its highlight, Don’t You Know I Love You, on which a joyous country shuffle met psychedelia and soft rock. Shakers, tambourine and bluesy guitars built into a crazy crescendo; even the thigh-slapping percussionist couldn’t keep up.

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