“It's nice to be home,” smiled Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes, as she played her biggest Brighton gig to date.

The singer is on tour to promote her second album Two Suns, which was released last week.

Having eschewed the iconic feathers and headbands usually associated with her live performances, this time Khan was clearly hoping to bring the Elizabethan ruff back to the nation’s catwalks.

She was the main focus of attention, as she moved between the mic and piano, as well as strapping on a guitar for the atmospheric Peace Of Mind.

The sound of the show reflected the starker nature of the new album, based largely around percussion, both acoustic and sampled, piano and artificial soundscapes.

The knock-on effect of these more exposed arrangements was to elevate Khan’s amazing voice, which filled the packed hall with her idiosyncratic lyrics of knights in crystal armour and her alter ego Pearl.

But after a brilliant opening triumvirate of Glass, Sleep Alone and debut album favourite Horse And I, a stripped-down version of new single Daniel demonstrated the problem with this approach, with songs melding into one another and the tempo rarely rising above a trot.

There was some relief with the selections from the Bat For Lashes Nationwide Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut Fur And Gold. Particular highlights including The Wizard, which was dedicated to Khan’s old schoolfriends, and Tahiti, performed with long-time associate Caroline Weeks.

But the pared down nature of the show became a problem during the band’s first set of encores, which saw Khan strip back old favourite Prescilla to just her voice and an autoharp, before playing two piano-driven new tracks, Good Love and Moon And Moon.

The crowd was beginning to thin noticeably before the percussion-heavy Two Planets.

The reaction the band got from those audience members remaining did encourage a second encore though, which was a much more upbeat return to Daniel, demonstrating what the band could pull out when needed.

It was certainly the most uplifting and, arguably, the best performance of the night.