DON’T YOU love it when a plan comes together? More than two years in the making, Tom McRae’s house concert was a triumph, an evening that will live long for those lucky enough to squeeze in.

There is no denying McRae’s material is too bleak for popular consumption, and his "high lonesome sound" too piercing for most. Yet, 25 years in, McRae has stuck to his guns - his songs twisting the knife into your gut, searing and unforgiving. While that might not sound like fun, that is exactly the word to describe the concert.

McCrae, trim in black, had the audience in the palm if his hand, and there was just the right amount of crowd participation and between-song banter to offset the dark matter coursing through his material, largely skewed towards more recent albums.

The audience also loved support act David McCaffrey, 18 years young from Easingwold. With a voice that can command a room and a poetic sensibility, he is most certainly a name to watch. With more variety in his melodies, and life experience, he could literally go anywhere, including the wayward path doggedly tracked by McRae.

The former Mercury Prize nominee is now touring solo. "I’m used to playing bigger rooms, to the same number of people," he joked, and while he did play this self-deprecating card too often, it summed up his wry, world-weary view on the fame and money that might, and might yet, be his. The lack of a signature tune (probably for someone else to take to the masses) suggests this commercially downward trajectory will continue, yet on this form, McRae might yet come up trumps.