Matthew Ward had mountains of material to draw on at this post-Glastonbury stopover. Backed by a four-piece band, all modelling an assortment of trilby hats and neo-folkie beards, the laconic 36-year-old singer-songwriter played a no-frills but lively set drawing on his seven albums of country-tinged Americana.

Based in Portland, Oregon, the prolific Ward has also worked as a collaborator and guitarist for hire to a broad range of artists including Conor “Bright Eyes” Oberst, Norah Jones, Cat Power and Beth Orton. In 2006 he recorded a rather fine album with the actress Zooey Deschanel under the name She & Him.

With three guitarists onstage in London, Ward beefed up the softly strummed indie-folk sound of his latest album, Hold Time, lending extra muscle and swagger to tracks such as Chinese Translation and Rave On. There was also crashing Tex-Mex melodrama in the fraternal friction saga Right in the Head and quiet desperation in the sublimely lovelorn lament Post-War. The band disappeared during Ward’s solo second act, which began with a spellbinding, smoky-voiced, acoustic version of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. The singer displayed his chameleon skills: fragile Will Oldham-style troubadour one minute, gravelly Tom Waits-ian bluesman the next. Between songs, he probably spoke no more than 20 words to the crowd all night.

Like Richard Hawley, Ward has a connoisseur’s fondness for the chrome-plated clatter of classic rock’n’roll. This became clear during the rowdy finale, when the band rejoined him for a run of vintage bar-room belters. A raunchy, rollicking Never Had No One Like You stampeded headlong into Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, which Ward hammered out on an upright piano.

But as the generic truck-stop blues-bar rockers began to stack up, an air of indulgence crept into proceedings. Maybe it is the curse of the session player, but Ward lacks the charisma to make such generic material feel fresh. All bands should keep to a maximum of one Jools Holland-style boogie-woogie jam session per performance. Any more risks boring the audience and, like this show, ending on a discordant twang of anticlimax.

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