Of all of the underground country artists from the Texas panhandle (Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, etc) none is as quite as maverick, or gifted, as Terry Allen. The 61-year-old in the just-flew-in-from-Maui shirt and shades, wiping sweat off his face with a teacloth and walloping an electric keyboard, is also the least well-known. His own fault; record releases are sporadic (mostly left-field, leftwing, wacko, visionary concept albums) and his shows rare. This is only his second UK tour, the first being eight years ago. But then he also has careers as a playwright (Chippy, The Diary of a West Texas Hooker), composer and artist - his sculpture in Denver airport was attacked by fundamentalist Colorado Christians as "demonic".

On the tour's penultimate night, the songs include Give Me a Ride to Heaven (about being carjacked by Jesus); Peggy Leg (about a dancer with one - albeit beautiful - leg), inspired he says in one of the delightful between-songs spiels, by reports of an ad hoc amputation on a victim of the Oklahoma bombing; and Yo Ho Ho Big Ol White Boys, a diatribe against the Iraq war. Then there's New Delhi Train - written for his pal Lowell George of Little Feat - Queenie's Song, written with another friend Guy Clark, and Buck Naked by David Byrne, with whom Allen collaborated on the True Stories soundtrack. There are also lengthy extracts from Juarez, his extraordinary Tex-Mex concept album about a Mexican prostitute, a female rock writer and a sailor.

Flanked by his son Buka on accordion and bongos and the celebrated Texan violin and mandolin player Richard Bowden, Allen sounds somewhere between a Texan Randy Newman, barroom Captain Beefheart, homicidal Guy Clark and JJ Cale on steroids, minus guitar. He's smart, mordant, wise and funny, and well deserves the standing ovations that bring him back for two lengthy encores.