Live Review: Ed Kuepper & Mark Dawson

With every tour, the venerable Ed Kuepper seems to be setting a challenge, presenting songs off his now-50-album back catalogue in a different format with each go-round.

In the last year or two, he's fronted a chamber orchestra, operated in a dryly wry near-cabaret acoustic mode, and here he's in duo mode with drummer Mark Dawson - his main alter-ego through that 1990s purple patch where the music just poured out. It's testament to these songs that the richness remains however they're delivered. And he makes that delivery seem almost effortless. The bastard.

But given that a fair proportion of the audience aren't getting any younger, and the man singing's throat is a bit scratchy, it's a seated game of two halves. The first set kicks off with Horse Under Water, its abstract Cold War tale seemingly now a staple in whatever mode. Its churn falls away to the airier spaces of the stately Pavane, from his most recent Lost Cities album, then to the more jagged waves of Electrical Storm. Dawson maybe isn't the flailing machine of back when, but he still uses the whole kit: a shimmer of cymbals, a clatter around the frame, an occasional hand bongo-ing. It's a shuddering insistence as the guitar tumbles through Ill Wind, later a pulsing heartbeat as The Way I Made You Feel unfurls.

Things get a bit loose in the 'by request' encore, as rehearsed songs run out. The audience gets to work as well. The Laughing Clowns' New Bully In The Town gets a crowd-sourced harmonica solo, a much-demanded take on The Saints' Know Your Product has most of us scatting the iconic horn part. But a hushed community singalong of Everything I've Got Belongs To You is genuinely tender as Kuepper wrings a final upward spiral from his instrument.