The evening opens with an impressive set from 20-year old Icelandic singer Ásgeir Trausti, who performs gentle acoustic songs redolent of José González. Iceland remains a common theme as John Grant, who is originally from Denver, has lived in Iceland for the past year, writing English lyrics for a re-release of Ásgeir’s debut album, which was sung entirely in Icelandic. Grant has also been collaborating with former members of Gus Gus for his radically different second solo release.

And on comes Grant with a five-piece band (guitar, bass, drums, synth and knob twiddling), four of whom hail from Iceland, while the other is drolly introduced as a Coventry man.

Performing songs primarily drawn from his recent record Pale Green Ghosts, he opens with 'You Don’t Have To' which introduces his new sound – minimal, subtly employing a battery of gorgeous synth sounds that ranging from beefy and squelchy to abrasively fizzy, recalling the best of Kraftwerk, OMD and Moroder, even Vangelis. Yet the songs are what makes him so special – stately, laconic, delivered in his sonorous, rich baritone, his lyrics provide a counterpart to the smoothly crooned and beautifully structured melodies; not so much barbed as dyspeptic, he chronicles a dysfunctional relationship with restrained seething. Yet with lyrics like “You are supercilious, pretty and ridiculous / You got really good taste; you know how to cut and paste” he averts solipsism with a self-lacerating humour.

With a few longeurs, the set takes a different turn with some positively ravey digital hoedowns, more Hot Chip than his familiar ironic balladeering. It’s the latter which remain the most affecting – classics that bring to mind Elton John or Rufus Wainwright at their best. Out of such well-crafted pieces as 'Queen of Denmark' and 'Glacier' he has forged a bittersweet style entirely of his own. Between songs, his asides range from the painfully honest (he is HIV+) to outright hilarious, and this is the key to his appeal. He handles universal themes via personal confessionals with a lightness of touch that belies the misery that inspired these often ostensibly upbeat songs; full of warmth, filtered through with clinically precise computer rhythms, he has merged two quite distinct styles - and his double encore provides the perfect conclusion to a wonderful performance.