Michael J Sheehy Borderline, London ****

If Elvis, Nick Cave and Michael Stipe sired a composite offspring, Michael J Sheehy would be the result. He may not be pretty - his Stipean tendency toward male pattern baldness is too assertive - but he certainly is striking.

Working the same area of Southern gothic as Presley and Cave, he hints at weird and unpleasant things in an airless whisper that repels as much as it attracts. Like his antecedents, Sheehy has returned to the original source - the blues - and uses the old melancholy structures as a starting point for a trawl through guilt and regret.

Formerly singer with Dream City Film Club, London rockers better known for their high living than their punk banging, Sheehy has done an abrupt about-face since launching his solo career 10 months ago. Where his old band grabbed you by the lapels, he diffidently tugs at your sleeve; where they employed volume as a weapon, Sheehy achieves the same effect with long silences mid-song, during which he collects his evidently dark thoughts.

Discreetly backed by drums, violin and harmonica (the last played by a teenage boy awed by his elevation to the big time, even though the room is half full), he sang most of his debut album, Sweet Blue Gene. You could have drowned in his chocolatey voice, which was accompanied only by guitar in the opening Love Me, but by New Year's Eve, three songs in, he was all coiled aggression under that Anglo-Elvis drawl.

The most unsettling thing wasn't the pacing of the show, which insidiously unfolded from delicate beginnings until you were enclosed in a swamp of sound where violin and harmonica tried to break free of their moorings. It was the calm way Sheehy sang of disturbing things. Daddy is a Good Man, directed at the underaged subject of a custody battle, was a case in point. "Daddy is a good man, pay no mind to what Mummy said, or soon you'll be just like her, bitter and sick in the head," he crooned with disconcerting tranquillity, recalling those people who end up in newspapers above the caption, "Neighbours said he kept himself to himself".

By the time he gently announced: "This one's called The Black Hole's Waiting, Baby," you didn't know whether to worry about his emotional health or wallow in the darkness along with him, a willing accomplice. Parental guidance suggested.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible