Matthew Jay may be one of this year's most acclaimed new singer-songwriters but he isn't having it easy. His band - only a few of whom played on his marvellous, Mercury-possible album, Draw - look like Shed Seven's road crew and, for a while, sound like them. The drummer wears a floppy fisherman's hat so low over his face he can barely see the kit, and ruins the first two songs by making a racket like someone banging on the door outside. The sound mix takes 15 minutes to settle down. Even Jay messes up the first song. He also wears a 1950s-style football top that the audience mocks, and although he's 21, he initially resembles a petrified schoolboy about to receive the cane.
Despite all this, Jay delivers - so much so that I almost suspect he's engineered the situation to demonstrate the indefatigable strength of his tunes. He's certainly got the melodies. His songs are airy, vaguely 1970s-sounding wonders, with hints of darkness not kept at bay by those singable choruses. You're Always Going Too Soon is his moving ode to a long-lost childhood friend; his songs are laden with similar imagery, which suggests he's never quite recovered from a prematurely shattered idyllic childhood.
Jay has a knowingly innocent air and the crowd warm to him. And his confidence and personality shine through. When someone holds a lighter aloft during the soaring Meteorology, he admonishes the infidel with a mock-stern remark: "We'll put a stop to that now."
Gradually, the band do justice to his music. Even the drummer - who, without hat, resembles Worzel Gummidge - redeems himself with some marvellous ride playing. A particularly breezy Call My Name Out is laden with colourful Steely Dan guitar licks. For an encore, the singer returns alone with an acoustic for the uncharacteristically sniping Four Minute Rebellion, which shows the steel beneath the spaniel hair. At the end Jay drops his plectrum, a T-shirt hits him full in the face and singer and audience erupt in laughter. He'll play bigger and better gigs than this, but few will be as endearing.
