"I'm an elder statesman of indie, you know," observes a deadpan Robyn Hitchcock, "a superannuated cult dude." It would be churlish to quibble: a 25-year career in which he has released 15 albums has established Hitchcock as a fixture in music's margins, the wacky benign uncle of English psychedelia. Hitchcock may be a fringe figure but his 1970s band the Soft Boys (formed at Cambridge University) were a large influence on REM, whose guitarist Peter Buck and drummer Bill Rieflin form two-thirds of his Venus 3 tonight. In his lurid floral shirt, Hitchcock retains the air of an eternal student: only his curtains of grey hair betray his 53 years.

His forte has always been a prim, clean-cut version of acid rock, powered by gentle whimsy. In equal thrall to the Byrds and the Goons, he routinely subverts his band's plangent jangle with his diligently zany lyrics as on Olé! Tarantula, the title track of his new album. The Museum of Sex, likewise, is little more than a volley of absurdist, dislocated phrases, but the band sound tight.

The leather-jacketed Buck is a fluid maestro, visually anonymous save for a trademark shimmy of the hip on the dextrous garage rock of Adventure Rocket Ship. Hitchcock functions at a tangent, taking five minutes to explain why (A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs is based on the denouement of Dirty Harry II. The Authority Box seems set on psychological self-examination, but then rallies to reach a typically surrealist conclusion: "Fuck me, I'm a trolley bus!"

A terminal Syd Barrett buff, he encores with "the best song ever", See Emily Play, plus his own 1979 romp Give It to the Soft Boys. Robyn Hitchcock will stay this fastidiously far out for another 25 years yet.

· At Empire, Belfast (028 90 249276) tomorrow, then touring.