The traditional music business strategy of finding a distinctive style and sticking to it doesn’t apply to Jesca Hoop. Since being encouraged to go into music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, who employed her as a nanny, the Californian has made five diverse albums, including the recent Memories Are Now. Anchored by her finger-picking technique, she rattles from dreamy balladry to skewered folk via clattering percussion and glorious harmonies with bandmate Kirana Peyton within the first three songs.

The evening offers plenty of entertainment, not least in trying to second guess what Hoop will do next. She sports 18th-century style, piled up hair and a curious, enveloping black outfit (“I’m trying to make chaps go viral,” she explains), and her banter is just as unpredictable. She makes wickedly unflattering remarks about Donald Trump, and reveals that when she relocated to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, mischievous new neighbours Elbow convinced her of an English expression for her fondness for red wine. “So I went around telling everyone, ‘I’ve got the painters in’,” she continues, to howls of laughter.

The comedy enhances the power of her melodies and words. The Coming powerfully rebukes her Mormon upbringing. The Kingdom’s ghostly autumnal imagery is poetry with music. She follows the sublime Pegasi’s last line, “Dying star”, with an astonishing, bird-like coo, before chuckling: “For the benefit of any concerned vocal coaches present, that is what a dying star sounds like.”

By the time she exits with a cheeky little bow, she is ahead in a field of one.

• At the Lexington, London, on 29 March. Box office: 020-7837 5371. Then touring.