The California songwriter who shares his first name with America's two main civil war generals is anything but combative. Given to gentle jokes mid-performance, the ambling Grant-Lee Phillips is a lover, not a fighter. But a touch of hot-headedness along the way might have made all the difference to career now five albums old and showing no real sign of expanding beyond a small supportive following. Look how far a volatile personality has taken the similar talents of Ryan Adams.

Phillips found his dreamy, alt-country niche in the 90s, as leader of cultish outfit Grant Lee Buffalo, and a decade or so spent touring has produced an affecting singer. With a burnished voice like his, it was preordained that he would end up writing songs that romanticise interstate highways and discount liquor stores, and on stage he brought them alive. There was a poignant little catch in his throat that, in itself, conjured up flaking paint, sun-baked asphalt and inertia.

Phillips and his band performed a wealth of material from his current album, Strangelet, and, by contrast, Buffalo's 1993 debut, Fuzzy. The crowd's response to the latter separated the part-timers from the obsessives; half screeched with joy at the bittersweet first notes of Fuzzy and Jupiter & Teardrop, while the rest politely nodded along. "Grant Lee Buffalo is now public domain!" Phillips insisted, by way of noting that his youthful take on Americana pales in comparison with the amber-tinted folkery of Strangelet.

From the new album, Johnny Guitar and Runaway were the star turns, while someone randomly called for Prince's Purple Rain. Ever the genial host, Phillips obliged. Given the choice between Prince at the 02 Arena or this performance, it would have to be Grant-Lee every time.