It has been a fantastic year for this copper-haired, Mercury-nominated singer-songwriter. From releasing EPs in County Wicklow in 2003, he has recently moved from visionary indie label Bella Union to American heavyweight Lost Highway, home to Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams. His smile, unsurprisingly, is as wide as the Thames, and when he asks the stewards to let us see the river by opening the curtains, everyone cheers.

The live arena suits Regan. His bright, strange songs about coastal towns that we once knew and jumpers soaked in pigs' blood soar over the bobbing heads, making his extraordinary gift for coupling nostalgia with danger even more potent. While the elements of his music suggest a menacingly dark strand of folk, the effect live is much more a whirlwind of elegantly juxtaposed sense impressions, accompanied by gorgeous finger-picked guitars and brushed cymbals. This boy's Ireland is the land of Flann O'Brien or James Joyce, rather than the home of the flute and the bodhran.

A few rambling between-song monologues about boxer dogs and wheelbarrows later, the gig turns into a warm soup of well-meaning heckles and singalongs. Regan steps away from the microphone to sing several times, and also to hear the crowd's drunken harmonies. After three gentle choruses of his beautiful last single Be Good or Be Gone, he staggers off happily, carrying a battered suitcase marked with a gaffer-taped "FR". Wherever he travels from here, many should follow.