Boogie Christ: Joseph Arthur @ Heath Street Baptist Church

Christ would wear cowboy boots, Christ would have sex, Christ would eat pizza and cut blackjack decks...

Regularly readers will know that I find it hard to write objectively about something I love, but this - far too overdue - account of Joseph Arthur's reverential gig at Heath Street Baptist Church in Hampstead on 11 October may be even more laden with superlatives than usual.

I've been a HUGE fan of Joe's since my dad, in his infinite musical wisdom, advised me to go to his gig at Café de la Danse in Paris four years ago. Joe blew me away then, playing for two hours solid and then some more acoustic at the merch stand passed curfew. Since then, the prolific Arthur has released three more solo albums, as well as albums with supergroups Fistful of Mercy and RNDM. His latest solo effort, the semi-autobiographical The Ballad of Boogie Christ, "about redemption and what happens after you find it and lose it", is considered by many to be his best yet, and certainly one of my favourite albums of the last few years, so it was with great excitement that I headed off to a Hampstead church for a sermon of a very unusual kind.

As well as an incredible musician, singer/song-writer and poet, Joe is also an artist, so we found the church adorned with his Basquiatesque creations. I loved the juxtaposition of his somewhat deranged visions with the sombre religious iconography. If I had a few thousand pounds to spare, I would have very happily taken one home with me.

Fellow New-Yorker Rene Lopez opened the show in style with songs from his new Latin-tinged Let's Be Strangers Again EP, ending with an old classic Roosevelt Is Burning. It was a real struggle for me not to jump out of my pew and start dancing, but it didn't seem appropriate in a church, so I had to limit myself to grinning like a crazy person.

Then it was time for the main attraction, with Joe accompanied by Rene on bass and Bill Dobrow on drums/rebolo. The packed set showcased the impressive range of styles that feature on The Ballad of Boogie Christ - rock, folk, soul, sung poetry... - as well as his trademark live guitar solos, which make spectacular use of a whole floor of effects peddles and loops. Scattered among the new tracks were classics including In the Sun, Chicago (one of my favourites, partly because of my weakness for the harmonica), and the hauntingly beautiful Redemption's Son. Joe struggled to speak through the gig - a mixture of insomnia and being weirded out by being able to see everyone as the church left the lights on - but that only made him even more endearing.

As well as his exceptional talent, one of my favourite things about Joe is how well he treats his fan. No amount of fatigue would stop him satisfying our demands for autographs and photos. It's this mixture that makes fans so devoted to him - my pew neighbour had travelled from Spain just for the gig - and is why, as we waited to meet our hero, all you could hear was fellow fans asking each other incredulously how he isn't playing a bigger venue... while  being selfishly grateful for the privilege of such an intimate gig. With the next album promising to be even better than Boogie Christ, I'm sure we won't have him to ourselves for much longer!

Visit josepharthur.com for more information, tour dates and live recordings of gigs. For a great introduction to The Ballad of Boogie Christ, watch the interview and live performance at KEXP below.