Villagers live... Scala, London, 5th October 2010

Conor O'Brien's Villagers played a crowded Scala in Kings Cross on Tuesday evening. Demonstrating his typically strong-willed artistic auto-prerogative, he opened with a couple of new, solo acoustic songs (titles unknown) - confident that his focused, single-minded stage presence would force the bubbly audience to rapidly hush. And the gig floated upwards and outwards from there, each song gradually raising the level. With just the debut album in the repertoire there's not a great deal of material, but nevertheless, what there is is rich and deeply moving.

In stark contrast to most artists, the deliberate effort and control he puts into vocal enunciation is already something of an O'Brien trademark and  is even more obvious live than on record. Like a poet, it's not just the words that matter, but the aural sound of each specific syllable - he caresses and cajoles them like any other capricious instrument.

It was also a joy and a relief to hear him still tweaking and fiddling with the songs, rather than drilling through them on auto-pilot. So the odd chord was altered, a new bridge squeezed in, the instrumentation rebalanced... This showed an artist in love with his music and his muse, but also working hard to keep that fire burning.

A flame like this is special and doesn't tend to burn very long (.. is anyone else also half dreading the next Winehouse album?) ...  let's hope it's bright a while yet.