It's fitting that Will Oldham's acting career has recently enjoyed rejuvenation with a leading role in Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" (2006). Although his acting is often seen as separate to his musical career, as alter-ego Bonnie 'Prince' Billie he has blurred role-play and reality with tales of gothic horror and exposed tenderness for almost a decade.  

His stage manner is equally contradictory, indulging the 2,000-odd seated fans with base jokes seconds before delivering songs so ethereal that the whole of Colston Hall holds their breath so as not to disturb. As a lyricist he sets his scope wide, touching on manic depression, the apocalypse and buggery, backed by a band that's a loose frame to his lyrical strokes.  

Dawn McCarthy, tonight's support act and the singer/harmony arranger on Oldham's last album "The Letting Go", flits on and off the stage, adding her ghostly vocals to the skeletal but varied songs. "Strange Form of Life" is as melodically captivating as the cover of John Martyn's "John the Baptist" is sprawling and the band even tries out honky-tonk with "Love Comes to Me". The one audience request of the night precedes the heart-rending "I See a Darkness" followed by a ramshackle reworking of "At the Break of Day" that's as close to jaunty as this band gets.  

In each song Oldham conveys personal fears and desires with impressionistic storytelling, depicting scenes, characters and mood with few words. The songs' beauty becomes as limitless as the listener's imagination, delivered with an authority that's biblical.  

Displaying the skill of a TV preacher, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's sermons come to a climactic end with album-closer "I Called You Back", and just like the 'holy men' of God Channel, there's something telling about his smile as he leaves the stage – another successful performance is over.