IF the prodigal son showed up for a gig, he’d do it like Gaz Coombes. 

He slides onstage without fanfare, in a black suit with hat pulled down, to sing in a low and mournful bass voice about crimes unrepented and journeys unfinished.

Behind him is a motley crew of oddballs picked up on the motorway of life: women dressed as the soup shelf in a corner store, a moustachioed bass player like a Latino circus knife-thrower, and a drummer dressed as the escapee from the posh episode in a Dickens novel. Which dressing-up basket have they raided to be like this?

It takes any band three numbers to get to the point and Coombes, who is a consummate band-leader, tracks us from apologetic presence to gleeful rocker.

By the third song they’ve hit their stride and the raucous beauty of his brand of alternative rock holds the room.

You can listen to Coombes on YouTube, all the way back to Supergrass and the runtish ecapade of Alright, but none of it prepares you for the discipline, the surpise and the exuberance of Coombes live.

For all that the songs seem never to come to a conclusion about anything, the musicianship is never in doubt.

This is adventurous, multilayered and extremely loud, stadium stuff squeezed into a small room and revelling in its ability to both to rock you and keep you guessing.

It works superbly. 

Coombes has had years of near celebrity to create music attuned to his vocal range that happily sheers into a piecing falsetto.

While the Brit-rock flavour and the Oxfordshire drawl remind you that Coombes is a child of the Blair era, he has had decades in which to to test his liberal values and his instinct for mainstream rock, and for two hours that hold the attention he makes you feel that he is still on the verge of writing a classic.

If the Buzzcocks, and an expectation that music should be rough is always there in the background, you feel his earnest desire to grow up, to reach towards Nick Cave and David Sylvian and even, in one rash and ambitious manoevre, to write a song about a boxer like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. 

It’s part of his charm that he’ll never get there, but can field all these aspirations with sincerity, panache and a dose of self-parody. And also, like any prodigal son, an eager need to please. 

The riskiness of it keeps the room attentive to his every word, and when he plays his nearly masterpiece The Girl Who Fell To Earth you don’t doubt that his experience of bringing up an autistic child is true, and you forgive him for treating the gig like a chat-show.

It’s all about him, and what he is becoming.

Standout numbers alternate the funky rhythm of Walk The Walk and Turn The Car Around with the oddly wistful sound poem, The Oaks.

Memorable oddities include his need to change guitar every song, flicking the strap over his head without ever taking his hat off, and a hilarious smoke-machine so intense that at one point the entire band disappeared.

More than worth it.

On tour until July 30. Details: gazcoombes.com.