For more than a decade, Richmond Fontaine have been plying their trade in the American northwest, turning out a string of albums which have gathered buckets of critical acclaim without ever threatening to make the group a household name. That may be because singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin isn't a conventional songwriter. Where others write lyrics that rhyme and build in glaringly obvious choruses, Vlautin's songs sound more like prose narratives fitted to music. His characters, who are often crooks, junkies or misfits, are vividly realised but maybe not the kind of people you want to spend too much time with.

Conveying the fine detail in the songs to an audience is a challenge, especially on a night like tonight when being in the Borderline was like being steamed over a huge pan of boiling water ("Throw ice," Vlautin pleaded). However, a crisp sound mix helped. There was plenty of space for Dan Eccles' guitar patrols, with their string-bending country phrases and jabbing runs, but the playing never trampled over the songs' content.

Their latest album, The Fitzgerald, is a sparse and minimal piece of work, but much of their material sits squarely in the Wilco/Son Volt alt-country mode. The opener, White Line Fever, sounded like a sequel to Lowell George's Willin' in its tale of a truck driver drowning in a torrent of pills and booze. Most harrowing of the lot was Cascade, the story of a boy who inherits $1400 from his mother, only to be murdered by his stepbrother for the money.

The downside is that a little of this stuff can go a long way, so the band's determination to play for as long as possible started to become counter-productive. Also, the music isn't always equal to the subtlety of the lyrics. Maybe they need a hit single but, let's face it, it'll never happen.