Jonathan Richman arrived in London, by train, for the only English date of his current tour, which also includes rail visits to towns in France, Italy and Ireland. He was accompanied by the drummer Tommy Larkins and to say that the pair of them are travelling light would be an understatement. Apart from making sparing use of the house PA, their entire set-up comprised one small drumkit, which Larkins played mostly with brushes or mallets, and one acoustic guitar that Richman played without a plectrum or even a strap with which to hang it round his neck.

Perched on the lip of the stage, with a vast expanse of empty space behind them, the two musicians performed at a volume that was roughly on a par with the noise of the venue's air conditioning system, prompting Richman repeatedly to request that it should be turned off - albeit to no avail. He began with When We Refuse to Suffer, a track from his new album Because her Beauty is Raw and Wild. Such was the simple homespun charm of his style it was as if he had stepped in from a parallel universe. In many ways he had. Even in the days when he was fronting his celebrated, proto-punk band, The Modern Lovers, the softly-spoken New Englander, who turns 57 this week, was always an instinctive outsider. Now he has become a technological refusenik, rejecting all contact with the internet. The unreleased Cell Phone Song, which he performed (twice) at the Empire, made his antipathy to this ubiquitous gadget equally clear.

Other new songs, such as The Lovers are Here and They're Full of Sweat, took a wry look at the pain and passions of the younger generation. “Sometimes you want someone to play the part of the old codger,” Richman explained. “I can do that.” In fact he looked remarkably sprightly and sang his songs - some of them in French and Italian - with a purity of expression and lightness of touch that belied the passing years. A new song, No one was like Vermeer, joined his celebrated Pablo Picasso in the famous painters' section. But there was depth to the performance as well as style. Called back, long after the house lights had gone up, Richman sang As My Mother Lay Lying, an elegy to his dying mother that ended the show on an unbelievably stark and moving note.

Editor's choice

• Are Glasvegas the new Oasis?
• Proms Podcast with Stephen Hough
• Vote for musical perfection