WOODPIGEON are a moveable feast, billed as a transcendental Canadian indie-rock collective, but Mark Hamilton, or Mark Andrew of the Hamiltons as his email address endearingly calls him, is always the main course.

Woodpigeon/Hamilton flew from Vancouver to Scotland to meet up, rehearse and record a hastily assembled cassette with his latest bandmates, his "sweet friends" Eagleowl, an Edinburgh band of lo-fi post-folk misery founded on guitar, violin, cello and bowed double bass.

After three days, they all travelled south, in a vehicle with health issues, but nevertheless arriving in one piece at The Band Room. Once there, Eagleowl duly mutated from one bird to another, first premiering their new, nearly jolly, "quite summery" Christmas song (surely the first of the year) before their "miraculous transformation into Woodpigeon from Canada" for the middle section of Hamilton's set.

The new relationship had sparked a pair of competitive songs, Eagleowl writing Eagleowl vs Woodpigeon, Hamilton countering with what turned out to be the superior Woodpigeon vs Eagleowl. This was among several new works from Hamilton, the pick being being Don't Fence Me In, fleshed out with loop effects, and Canada.

"It's a song about how dishonest Canada is – and Canadians, I guess," he said, whereupon his microphone crashed into his guitar. "It's karma," he joked.

Hamilton, a sublime guitarist with a tender voice, has a disarming way of marrying gorgeous melodies to stories of car accidents or tragedies. "OK, two young children enter the river. Zero come out. I'm terribly sorry," he warned. You laugh and then cry at the story of a drowning tragedy that followed.