Steve Mason and his four-piece entered to an easy listening track mixed with a 1970s TV game show.

The new album Meet The Humans is yet to be released and the unexpected was eagerly anticipated – it has been three years since Monkey Minds In The Devils's Time.

The crowd was large, perhaps because of Mason's recent relocation to Brighton as well as to his bygone years with The Beta Band.

The set played safe by being a long one with old as well as new. For the start of the tour the band was impressively tight and Mason's vocal, although soft, sat well in the mix.

As the volume increased the lyric got lost which was frustrating as Mason has much to share.

New songs take a while to bed in and so oldies such as Seen It All Before and Come To Me were the stand out performances.

The whole band was deadpan with little expressed on the surface. It's an attitude that reflected Mason's own stand off repartee yet was incongruous with the new poppier songs, fitting better with Mason's darker more ponderous material.

But that is Steve Mason. A Scot in Arctic explorer garb, a geezer with a sweet vocal, refreshingly the man will not be pigeonholed.

Three stars