It’s almost a year to the day since we were last in the gymnasium-like, and exceptionally noisy (students must just have so much to chatter about) University of London Union. On that occasion, having witnessed the much inebriated Willie Mason, I was moved to comment at some length on the revival of the singer songwriter. Well music-lovers, the news is that they’re still hot – in fact we’ve got an interesting trio, young and old, at consecutive gigs in mid-May and early June.

Kamila kicks off - and we arrive half way through in a half-empty hall. What with the student chat chat chat, and her relatively poor microphone technique, it was hard to pick up the titles of the songs we heard, but they were very spare and very sad. I know she played ‘Cars’, which you can hear on her myspace page. Next up (yes, it’s a big value for money night Serge) are Sol Seppy, or I should say Sophie Michalitsianos and her band. Sophie is a much-acclaimed pianist, cellist and vocalist and sometime collaborator of Sparklehorse, whose recently released album, The Bells of 1 2, has received considerable praise from the British Press.

And I have to say that next to me (I should mention Serge, that I’ve rarely been so close to a stage in my life – partly to get away from the chatterboxes at the back, but also because I’d left the wonderful Whiskyfun camera at home and the Photographer’s stand-in was only going to work up front) were some distinctly over-aged North American ladies (one of whom managed to get her head in all the pictures), who it turned out, seemed to have Teddy on the sort of pedestal that Serge normally reserves for his beloved Brora – now how scary is that? Now I’ll cut to the point (at last!). Teddy Thompson is the real business.

In fact he’s almost too good. You sort of wonder where that almost throw away accomplishment comes from (yeah yeah – I know – his Mum and Dad). Having had a rocky start with a lost album back in 2000 he sort of went to ground with family and friends, but with the release of an EP Blunderbuss in 2004, and then last year’s Separate Ways, he seems to be back with a very big bang. He’s smart sardonic and self-depreciating (as are many of his songs). And if you didn’t know better you might think he looked like a youthful Steve Winwood (hang on, I thought little Stevie W was always youthful?) and sounded like Lyle Lovett. If there’s any obvious familial influence it’s in the phrasing of some of his chord sequences – made more obvious on the album where Dad plays some outrageously Daddish style guitar. But tonight Steve Schiltz (normally front man for New York band Longwave) has the guitar in hand and he is frankly inspired and highly original, a foil and contrast to Thompson’s mostly downbeat, though sometimes humorous lyrics. Highlights are opener ‘Shine so bright’, ‘Altered state’ and ‘No way to be’, but it’s hard to find a weak number in the set. Kamila helps out on a new country inspired song, ‘Down low’, and appears for the first encore to sing (really beautifully, albeit at the second attempt) the Everly Brothers’ ‘Take a message to Mary’.

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