A TV show is one quick way to pop stardom; Jim White took the scenic route. In his 44 years, he has sampled drugs, religion and driving a New York taxi, and experienced the mysterious death of his seven cats. All but one of his women have left him, one for the man who sat behind him in church and another, reputedly, for an asylum. He has endured visions and spent a period on the run from "malevolent occult forces". White - who was born Mike Pratt, but adopted a stage name to make a clean break - is a one-off. "You're all so friendly," he simpers, deadpan. "Where I come from, people aren't friendly to me."
It's hardly surprising. White sings about weirdness, eccentricity and, repeatedly, murder. One of his songs concerns a woman turned into a serial killer after abuse from her father. Another examines the last thoughts of a man strapped to a railway line in front of an oncoming train. And those are just the cheery ones. White has a gem called God Was Drunk When He Made Me ("that's why I'm so crazy") with a blasphemously brilliant punchline: "But I forgive him." As White explains, "That song got me in a lot of trouble at home. That's why I play it 5,000 miles away."
The residents of Pensacola, Florida, need to get a sense of humour. White is funny, admittedly often in a bleak kind of way. Alone with guitar, bells, harmonica and electronic tricks ("This is a live performance, just not with people"), he introduces the drummer as "this Japanese tangle of wires".
More darkly, he worries that when he debuted a song about a dead girl in the river at a gig in Glasgow they found a dead girl in the river the following morning. "This happens all the time," he says. In his hick mechanic's cap, White is part Norman Wisdom, part Norman Bates.
As laughter becomes nervous and chatter fades to an awe-struck silence, White weaves his spell, walking a mesmerising line between Chris Isaak, Johnny Cash and David Byrne - a fellow documentarist of a skewed America who signed White to his label. Byrne would probably kill to write a song as pithily thought-provoking as Things Is Always Better Than They Seem, and White leaves to a standing ovation. If he can somehow manage to die during this tour, legendary status is assured.
· Jim White plays New Roscoe, Leeds (0113-246 0778) tonight, then tours.
