It pays not to be too picky about labelling music. Wisely, the English Folk Dance and Song Society, which traces its origins to 1898, sets “no geographical limit” on its activities – just as well when the “bouncer” on the door is a mock-up of the Burry Man of South Queensferry, a rustic figure of 900-year-old Scottish pageantry, and latter-day Californian longhairs are playing sun-dappled country-rock inside.

In truth, this was the gentlest of gatecrashings. Vetiver’s leader, Andy Cabic, said he had an eye on the green flashing lights on the back wall – just below the “fauvist pornography” of Ivon Hitchens’s 65ft mural – that monitored the noise levels.

Thus a small but enthusiastic throng could relish a gig with the intimate, attentive feel of a radio session, each note glistening in the wood-panelled hall’s excellent acoustics.

Fresh from supporting Fleet Foxes earlier in the week, Vetiver were promoting their new album, Tight Knit, out on March 9. The title was a good description both of the songs – their most compact and catchiest yet – and their performance, even if Cabic’s soft, wistful voice was overwhelmed on the more upbeat numbers. “Rolling Sea” burbled with a late Byrdsian twang like a landlocked shanty; “Sister” sparkled with a metronomic triangle; the romantic sway of “Through the Front Door” took Cabic closer than ever, vocally and tunefully, to Josh Rouse’s Nashville nostalgia and away from the “freak folk” of his friend Devendra Banhart.

Lovely old songs such as “Maureen” and “I Know No Pardon” had lilting outings but the highlight – as the volume sensor proved – was their renowned reinvention of Hawkwind’s “Hurry On Sundown” as a psychedelic barn-dance boogie.

Some say Vetiver are stuck in a rut but to think that is to mistake what the band are about. They mine a soulful seam of what Gram Parsons called “cosmic American music” in their own sweet time. As Cabic sang over the bluesy Bakersfield bop of “On the Other Side”: “No pressure, I don’t worry/ I do what comes naturally/ No need to push or hurry/ That just ain’t my speed.”

When he locked into the reverential hush of Bobby Charles’s “I Must Be in a Good Place Now”, only a churl could disagree.