IT was so hot, Josh Rouse was wearing his shades inside The Crescent!

The doors stayed open, more in hope than expectation of cooling Sunday's ceaseless summer heat, but the ex-pat Nebraskan’s mellow, sundowner songs suited the balmy air.

“Would you like a fan?”, asked Please Please You gig promoter Joe Coates. No, said Rouse, addressing us all. He had lived in Valencia, Spain, for a decade with his wife Paz, so he was just fine in those shades, white shirt and jeans.

Whereas his new album, Love In The Modern Age, has the Eighties-inspired accoutrements of saxophone, guitar reverb, backing vocals and keyboards, echoing Roxy Music, Prefab Sprout and Leonard Cohen, here Rouse played alone, relying on his acoustic guitar, caressing voice and charming wit.

Performing, at his request, to a seated audience, he opened with the perfect song for this night: Some Days I'm Golden All Night – and true to his word, he was indeed golden all night, not one weak song among his repertoire.

2015's The Embers Of Time album provided further highs in Crystal Fall and Neil Young, named after the great Canadian whose influence is apparent in Rouse's work, but not detrimentally so.

This year's follow-up had Rouse encouraging us to sing with him on both the sassy title track and his young daughter's favourite, Businessman, whose "24 hours a day" refrain she sings whenever her parents start arguing in the car.

Rouse picked well from his past too, whether reactivating early landmark Dressed Up Like Nebraska or revelling in the swell Love Vibration. He even asked for the Crescent mirror ball to be switched on at one point – it wasn't possible, alas – but he dazzled anyway. May be that's why he was wearing those dark glasses all along.