The Sisters of Mercy, The Forum, London<br></br>Down the Dustpipe, Royal Festival Hall, London

They didn't come much more magnificent – in aspiration always, and in reality often – than The Sisters Of Mercy in their prime. As a recovering Goth – like an alcoholic, you're never an ex-one – I enter the Forum in a combination of trepidation and optimism. It doesn't take long to realise that only the first of these two is justified. This is the Smoke And Mirrors tour, and the room fills with dry ice long before showtime. That's the smoke. Where are the mirrors? Then I remember. I met Andrew Eldritch once, and I thought he was the record company teaboy. Only when he put on his silver shades did his face fall into place.

Tonight, hidden by that smoke and those mirrors, his tiny, skinny frame is almost invisible (is that a bald head, or very short blond hair?). And inaudible: he skips the first verse of "Temple Of Love" completely. When he does sing, his voice is shot to pieces, and throughout a set in which once-loved tunes are cursorily and cash-grabbingly tossed at us, I realise you should never go back.

He doesn't talk to us, of course (his contempt is manifest). After the magnificent bassline to "Lucretia (My Reflection)" turns to mud in the mix, he breaks silence: he's "seriously disappointed" by something or other. You and me both.

So, there I am on the concourse at Waterloo, killing time and dodging apple cores thrown by the football scum, when this guy walks past. Gangly frame, ruffled hair, thrift-store fashion, looks like he never got over leaving university. Bet he's on his way to see Stephen Malkmus.

"Hi, I'm Stephen ... er ... Malkmus." Half an hour later, the same guy is on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall, so self-effacing and hesitant he even pauses in the middle of his own name. The man in the station really was the former Pavement leader, and the curator of last weekend's two-nighter at the South Bank. Down The Dustpipe ("I thought it was ... er ... a British phrase," he apologises, "but I was wrong") is loosely and vaguely aimed at "deep-mining US-UK connections", in a more melodic and less bloody way than the transatlantic conspiracy hatched just across the Thames in Westminster.

First up on the Saturday night are The Groundhogs, three men with bald-but-long hairstyles, who look like mediaeval executioners, or perhaps Bill Bailey in 20 years' time. They're like the Hendrix Experience without a Jimi.

Next is Vashti Bunyan, a Sixties folk singer so obscure that, when people suddenly started virally and vogueishly dropping her name this year, I thought she might be a conceptual gag who didn't actually exist. Bunyan, the legend goes, was a reclusive lass from the Hebridean island of Uist, who once rode all the way to London on her horse Bess. Willowy and witchy-haired, she looks suspiciously young to have written her first song, "Just Another Diamond Day", as long ago as 1966. It's dreamy, quicksilver stuff which might have come from the score of The Wicker Man. After just three songs (two old, one new), she's gone again and heading back to the Hebrides. Bess is waiting outside and she's getting impatient.

Super Furry Animals are "from Wales", Malkmus tells us, "so they're automatically cool". Doesn't always work like that – Stephen can't have heard Feeder – but in this case he's 100 per cent correct.During "Down A Different River", someone crawls under the skirt of the stage, pursued by security. Gruff Rhys stops mid-verse and peers over, puzzled. "I've never seen anyone try to invade under the stage before..." Several songs (at the request of the Cymraeg-fascinated Malkmus) are Welsh-language ones, mainly from the Mwng album. These receive deadpan explanations from Gruff, to much audience mirth: "Nythod Cacwn" is "about the dangers of being attacked by a swarm of bees", "Y Gwyneb Iau" means "Liver face – it's a big insult to call someone a face of liver".

Stephen Malkmus is enviably eligible (like a real-life Tenenbaum sibling, he almost pursued a career as a tennis pro), and only a little bit smug with it. His band The Jicks take the stage with "PIG LIB" placards, and as they begin to showcase the album of the same name, you realise that Malkmus has swapped one kind of Anglophilia for another. If Pavement's primary influence were The Fall, his solo career is in thrall to The Kinks: he's exchanged the crooked rain of Manchester for the sunset of Waterloo.

It's a happily shambolic, informal kind of show, with non-stop dancing from the jewellery-rattlers in the posh folks' box. My abiding thought: for a lo-fi, too-slacker-to-hit-the-high-notes kinda guy, Malkmus sure owns a hell of a lot of Stratocasters. In another life, they might have been Slazengers.

s.price@independent.co.uk

The Sisters of Mercy: Blank Canvas, Leeds (08456 444 844), tonight