It's surprisingly rare to find folk singers as compelling with their own songs as they are with material that’s been passed down through the generations.

Thursday’s support act, Thirty Pounds Of Bone, had the knack, with an inspired, melancholy version of All For Me Grog mixed in with some beautiful original songs.

And headliner Alasdair Roberts has it too.

The Glasgow-based singer and his band opened with a Scottish version of traditional murder ballad Two Sisters, and immediately followed it with an accomplished song of his own: Year Of The Burning, about the Highland Clearances.

Roberts also mixed Scots bonhomie with more sinister overtones. His distinctive guitar picking seems determined by his long, bony fingers and discerning plucks.

While, under a flickering spotlight, he sang “I’ve stuck a knife in a man for less” in the rasping Farewell Sorrow, he equally managed to turn blood-soaked ballad Long Lankin into a rather jolly affair, despite its subject matter: infanticide.

As the night continued, Roberts increasingly relished centre stage. His version of The Cruel Mother, sang mostly a cappella, was spellbinding, as was his lengthy, hypnotic spoken introduction to The Burning Of Auchindoun; a story of rubies, stars and a fiddle-playing tailor.

Roberts and his band played with increasing intensity to the end of the set, before he returned for a solo encore.

His choice of song, Bonnie Susie Cleland – about a Dundee lass burned for her love of an Englishman – illustrated well the dark humour and fascinating contradictions that make him such a unique, impressive artist.