AS THE frontman of the 1990s sadcore US guitar band Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek’s lyrics have always been deeply personal. Yet for the last few years he has taken confessional songwriting to a whole new level.

Writing life-affirming lines about the death of close friends and relatives and finding meaning and beauty in the minutiae of everyday life, he is the closest thing the US has to Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, that master of the mundane.

Performing under his musical alias Sun Kil Moon, his lengthy set is taken entirely from what is something of a middle-aged artistic renaissance, in particular his magnificent 2014 album Benji and his new record Universal Themes.

Prowling the stage as he sings, he comes across as a slacker Frank Sinatra — with a soaring voice to match. His recent records have been musically restrained, so it’s pleasing to see Kozelek later strap on an electric guitar and, backed by his three-piece band, rock out on new song The Possum and Dogs, a sexually explicit dirge that details “the complicated mess of sex and love.”

In between songs he’s a funny, if somewhat grumpy, showman. Noticing empty seats in the front row he amusingly needles the press as “a bunch of fucking weirdos,” before laughing at the size of his own stomach and explaining just how boring is the six-disc box set of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.

Kozelek ends with a heart-stopping performance of the epic, almost spoken-word, This Is My First Day and I’m Indian and I Work at a Gas Station.

It’s a song referencing being on a film set in Switzerland, a leaky pipe, waking up to the sound of Michael Caine’s voice, Israel-Palestine, meeting Jane Fonda, playing with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and a visit to the dentist.

An audacious end to an extraordinary concert from an artist at the top of his game.

Review by Ian Sinclair