Arriving at The Rescue Rooms for tonight’s gig, your Strange Things team are somewhat surprised to see no less than three support acts listed. This is theoretically value for money, and while we’ve missed the opener, we are in time to catch the opening bit of Chris Reeve Esq, who turns out to be a rather dull sounding bloke with a guitar. Discretion being the better part of valour, we head back down to the main bar for a couple of wildly overpriced Hobgoblins before returning to the Red Room (The Rescue Rooms tiny upstairs offspring) for Burly Nagasaki. This proves to be a mistake. The band turn out to be an act I saw a month or so earlier, under a different name – either they have recently rebranded or simply chance their name for each gig to confuse punters who would otherwise know to stay away. A decidedly sub-par and self-consciously ‘quirky’ White Stripes, they are just as heavy going tonight as last time, and the fact that they seem so damn pleased with themselves makes them even more irritating.

Thankfully, Thomas Truax is soon on stage to show how genuinely eccentric music should be done. While I had some issues with his most recent album, Truax live is remarkable – a one-man-band with a stage full of his extraordinary home made instruments – and the odd ‘real’ instrument – he plays a mix of gleefully oddball yet undeniably enjoyable tunes that defy categorisation. He’s also hilarious – his self-deprecating humour, his fumbling and the assorted technical difficulties (he’d lost his usual soundman earlier this day) making this a wonderfully good-natured and entertaining show. At one point, he lives the amplification behind to wander out into the middle of the audience with a guitar, before cheerfully heading out of the room and down the stairs, still playing, before returning… and then heading out of the door on the other side.

This good-natured, rather intimate approach seems to translate to the audience, who are themselves an unusually mixed bunch (looking around the room, you would have no idea about what sort of musical act would be performing) and the gig seems to become less of a show and more an intimate gathering of friends.

Truax really deserves his own TV show – his mix of comedy, music and eccentricity would make for a great show. In the absence of that, I’d suggest you ensure that the next time he plays anywhere near you, you make sure that you catch him.

DAVID FLINT