John Grant @ East Village Arts Club, Liverpool, 18 October

A tall, boxy figure, imposing yet with the gait of one unsure what to do with his strength and dimensions, John Grant stands centre stage in a room immobile with over-attendance, his band and their impressive battery of hardware and keys crammed in around him. He sings with his hands out in front, palms turned inwards as though in surrender to himself, and adjusts them in accordance with the song's swell or ebb.

It's an almost operatic method, this measured, squarish motion the only outward expression of the otherwise invisible control behind his caramel tenor – and a calm performance style that belies the rigorous staying power and concentration needed to execute the one-note sustains of Marz, the staccato vowel-play of Black Belt and the rousing carousal of I Hate This Town (that saloon piano slip-slopping from bar to door).

It's also an appropriate partner to the central principle behind Grant's music – that is, as evinced on his two solo albums since splitting from The Czars, 2010's Queen of Denmark and this year's Pale Green Ghosts, a deliciously misleading combination of brutal lyrics delivered satin-wrapped in strings, midnight piano and that velveteen, half-askance vocal.

His is an arresting – in the truest, schismatic sense of the word – deception, and one that has clearly connected deeply with tonight's adoring attendees, whose jubilance as they raise their voices and drinks to the chorus of GMF is really something to behold. As Friday nights go, there's nothing quite like a room full of people triumphantly claiming, “I am the greatest motherfucker that you're ever gonna meet / From the top of my head down to the tips of the toes on my feet”, blasted in hot yellow light and united in crescendo. [Lauren Strain]