Weyes Blood @ The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, 25 Nov

The evening begins, fashionably late, with Glaswegian crooner Alistair Ogilvy. He runs through a few plaintive ballads, peppering his set with offerings from his most recent album July Moon, throwing out a little banter to the sparse, docile crowd. Bob Dylan's Boots of Spanish Leather then gets a Celtic tinge before the set's wrapped up and Ogilvy's away in a succinct 25 minutes; a low-key start to proceedings.

The room starts to fill up as we wait for Weyes Blood, approaching capacity by the time Natalie Mering and her band emerge from the hobbit hole at the back of the stage. With a moon-emblazoned blazer, crinkly crêpe-linen trousers and black boots, Mering exudes a gothic, ethereal air, at once serious and playful, but after a nervous smile and a quiet “Hi, Glasgow”, the tension in the room deflates and the warm, opening keys of Diary set a convivial tone for the evening.

The set draws mainly from Front Row Seat To Earth, ebbing and flowing between experimental, ambient effects and the folksy, 70s singer-songwriter melodies that she's best known for. The percussion moves from gentle woodblock one moment to bombastic crescendos the next (e.g. Do You Need My Love), while the dulcimer twinkles and the keys pound.

Time passes quickly in the cramped basement and before we know it we're being treated to an encore of Soft Machine's 1968 banger A Certain Kind, where Mering offers up a swaying, hippy-ish dance for us and the crowd reciprocates with a soft-shoe shuffle of its own. After an epilogue by way of a solo performance of Cardamom, she slips away without ceremony and a hush hovers over the room... before the lights return and the collective revery is broken.