LLOYD Cole woke up with a sore threat, but thankfully not a sore head. And so, fuelled by lozenges whose efficacious value he could not vouch for, he made his way through two hour-long sets at Pocklington Arts Centre on a sold-out Saturday night with a wit drier than his throat felt.

Long since leading The Commotions, Cole has become a master of the solo acoustic show, reappraising past works and album sleeves alike with a disarming self-deprecation wholly unexpected in the smartest post-student days and early swagger of Perfect Skin.

Cole is still crafting songs of lyrical flow, romantic insight and cultural perception, but his present touring modus operandi is to focus on his 1983-1996 recordings, the years of The Commotions and his "less well received" singer-songwriter years in New York when his album cover portraits "just made me look angry".

He slipped in tributes to Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, and Prince recordings filled the interval air, and if Cole makes a joke about his hits being thinly spread across the two hours, nevertheless his songwriting always merited more.

At first alone with four guitars, he was joined post-interval by one William Cole, the son with the unsmiling look of a young Lloyd doing a Jesus And Mary Chain covers set and guitar cool galore.