Plush: 12 Bar, London

PLUSH'S LIAM HAYES isn't a man who does things easily. He released his first single in 1994, his first woozy LP in 1998, and didn't follow that up until 2002's Fed, an orchestral album of Brian Wilson and Randy Newman-like proportions that almost bankrupted him. Last year, he released Underfed, the demos for that record. Add a cameo in Stephen Frears' High Fidelity – he plays at a fuggy bar's piano, allegedly at the request of fellow Chicago-dweller John Cusack – and Hayes' reputation as one of contemporary music's strangest, perhaps laziest, most compelling performers was cemented.