Over the course of a 20-year career, former frontman of The Beta Band, Steve Mason, has cemented a reputation as a songwriter of rare ability, adventure and insight on the human condition.

Confessional songs of love, loss, protest and his battles with depression use a patchwork of genres – folk, electronica, dub – to create melancholic beauty and a brand of off-kilter pop that is recognisably his own.

Three successful solo albums, particularly last year’s superb Meet The Humans, seems to have heightened Mason’s self-assurance.

Mason, who once impetuosity decried The Beta Band’s full-length debut as “a crock of shit”, is now so surefooted as to present an expansive career-spanning set with a widescreen Barbican backdrop, complete with a bells and whistles ensemble led by collaborator, composer and musician Joe Duddell.

The two hour set is a celebration of his vision. There is uplifting folk pop (the Scottish referendum-baiting “Alive”), desolate balladry (the heartbreaking “Ran Away”), and several moments that overtly display how composite Mason’s songwriting is.

Opener, “It’s Not Too Beautiful”, breaks down a krautrock-ish riff with sweeping film-noir-soundtrack strings and back again (“we figured if we could do that we could do anything”); similarly, “Hardly Go Through” builds to a sprawling soundscape that washes over the hall like Spiritualized at their most elegiac.

Tonight’s highlights come immediately after an intermission via a selection of tracks where Mason is accompanied by the orchestra alone.