From swoony Brechtian crooner to bilegobbin' punky schizoid, the masks of Cathal Coughlan are many and varied and not always personable. At times during this hometown show, the material seems almost wilfully difficult with awkward hooks hidden under obtuse rhymes wrapped in enigmatic melodies. But at least he doesn't take pop's conventions and blithely accept them. He gazes through a glass darkly and spins a nervy twist into the listless vapidity. Tonight, he's accompanied by the Nine Wassies From Bainne, an act whose own lunatically-skewed worldview merits close attention. It's a match made in hottest hell and it gels demonically well. From the opening This Building through to highlights like the remarkable Door To Door Inspector, Coughlan and the Wassies work off each others' neurosis and it comes across as a strangely therapeutic exercise for both parties. It is almost fitting that this is held in a picture-house as the former Fatima Mansions singer's voice does have a certain filmic quality: when he lets it soar on the slower tunes, it's as lonesome and as yearning as a prairie dawg's. As has always been the case with Coughlan, it's his language that elevates the experience. The lyrics are poetically-charged, loaded with juicy dazzle-bursts of venom and rancour. Cathal live is not a cosy proposition. Just when you're getting comfy in your seat, he'll come and whack you about the head with an iambic pentameter. The final encore, Behind The Moon, remains a classic, a bitter but loving ballad of dispassionate blue. He wows us with that, walks from the stage, turns and snarls once, and is gone.

Cathal Coughlan plays tonight in Whelans, Dublin.