"I have nightmares like this, but in them I'm normally naked," lamented Chris T-T as this gig threatened to fall apart for the umpteenth time.

He could hardly have wished for a worse place to find himself besieged by the barrage of technical problems which befell him at The Engine Room, from broken strings to incoherent sound and beyond.

This was, after all, a homecoming gig for the man who remains one of Brighton's most low-key treasures, and one at which he had apparently been expecting plenty of Press to be in attendance.

When he did manage to get going, his talents overpowered his outrageous misfortune - enigmatic, intense, passionate and bristling with social witticisms, T-T is the antidote to the broken promise of the singer-songwriting genre.

So many colourless drones have been and gone it's an utter relief to find someone who reminds you how thought-provoking, necessary and downright exciting the art can be, channelling a mirage of issues into a psychedelic crossfire of indie guitars and folkish accapellas.

T-T's classic style is one he can pull off on his own or with a variety of accompaniments, and tonight he was joined by two members of Stuffy/The Fuses on drums, bass and backing vocals, giving a beefier presence to his sound to match the near-capacity venue.

Within the psychogeographical blueprint of English Earth, he implored his listeners to "leave the fools and the smoke behind, this land is yours, this land is mine". Amid the rumble of twanging riffs on the title track of his new This Gun Is Not A Gun EP, T-T challenges perception with a serrated, underlying sarcasm.

He remained in turns funny, poignant and self-deprecating, with the bonus emotion of incredulity at quite how stacked the fates seemed to be against him.

The graveyard of broken strings and false starts which haunted his performance will probably have seemed disastrous to this most thoughtful of musicians, but to everyone else in the room it only added to his intrigue.