St Vincent’s Chapel in Stockbridge is one of the more singular spaces Edinburgh offers musicians. Its gothic halls reverberate with every sound, amplifying instruments and voices alike. In such a setting, it’s easy for performers with too much going on to get swallowed by the dark corners and lofty ceilings. The evening’s lineup of Cod O’Donnell, Bell Lungs and Texan guitar virtuoso Hayden Pedigo, however, just about manage to shine within the chapel’s hallowed surroundings.

Cod O’Donnell, the self-styled “bard of Dunbar,” opens with a set of surreal, abrasive, yet oddly charming folk songs. His stage persona carries a kind of anarchic mischief that’s difficult to pin down. With his face obscured by a googly-eyed paper bag, hunched over a banjo or slide guitar and howling into the vaulted space, he feels like some Lovecraftian entity attempting to emulate Bob Dylan. It isn’t exactly a comfortable watch — at times you’re never quite sure what O’Donnell might do next, whether it’s careering into the audience with a drum, throwing ping pong balls to random audience members, or vanishing into the pulpit to conjure up sounds from a hidden keyboard. Yet beneath the chaos, there’s a playful absurdity to his performance that keeps it from tipping into menace. Songs like ‘Jeffrey the Fly’ and ‘I, Cryptid’ set the tone for the night; their rough-hewn humour and jagged melodies filling the chapel with a strange sort of joy.

Next up is Bell Lungs, who delivers a performance built from ambient sounds and shifting textures. Sampling her own voice, snatches of audience noise — a cough here, a can set down there — alongside the tactile clicks of the tape machines she manipulates, she engages with the space in a completely different way to O’Donnell. The set is all atmosphere: lights dimmed, candles glowing, and a haunting stillness settling over the church. At the midpoint comes a change of gear. Picking up her violin, the set becomes  a buzzing harmonic lattice of strings, each looped phrase stacking upon the last until the chapel is saturated with sound. What began as delicate filaments gradually grew into a resonant wall that seemed to pulse within the vaulted ceiling; immersive and enveloping.

Finally it’s the turn of the headline act and very much the man of the hour, Hayden Pedigo. “My name is Hayden Pedigo, I’m from Amarillo, Texas. That’s how I open every single show and I’ll continue to do that for the rest of my life,” comes the calm Texan drawl carrying easily through the church. Hayden tells us that his songs are filled with moments of silence, and that sometimes audiences mistake these moments for the song ending. To avoid any awkward premature clapping, he invites us to embrace these silent moments. Clearly, this is a subject he has thought a lot about, and a guiding principle that permeates his work. We’re urged once more to savour these spaces together, before the mystical 12-string shimmer of ‘Smoked’ begins to play. Instantly, the sound is resonant as crystal, and the audience are enraptured. The gaps in the opening song are indeed mesmerising somehow, opportunities to feel the resonance of his guitar suspended briefly amongst the audience like a fading, heavy vapour.

Each instrumental piece is framed with an anecdote or fragment of background, pulling the audience further into Pedigo’s world. Introducing his second song, ‘Long Pond Lily’, he jokes that it’s “as if John Fahey wrote a song for Led Zeppelin IV,” while admitting it’s among the hardest he plays live. “It’s like riding a bull,” he says. “Sometimes you fall off and break your neck, and six months later you try again.”

Despite being a self-confessed overthinker, there’s a simplicity to both the man and the music, a sense of clarity and purpose that’s immediately compelling. Pedigo seems entirely at ease when speaking with his audience. Midway through the set he even invites questions — on anything at all. It’s an engaging exchange that leads to stories of how his recent collaboration with noise-sludge pioneers Chat Pile came about (“I moved house and they happened to be my neighbours”), reflections on how location influences his sound (he credits the long pauses in his music to the dusty plains and open skies of Amarillo), and favourite books (The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton tops his list). Finally, he asks us a question; if we’d prefer to hear something “pretty” or “ugly.” The inevitable chorus of “ugly!” prompts his wry reply: “Ugliness always wins in this world.” He then launches into ‘Rained Like Hell’, a piece apparently inspired by Washington drone-metal band Earth. With its ominous, chiming guitar and darkly melancholic weight, it stands as a true highlight of the night.

The set closes with ‘I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away’, a piece about staying present so as not to let the good times slip past unnoticed. By the time Pedigo sets down his guitar, there’s a sense that we’ve been guided somewhere quietly profound. Though the guitar work was impeccable, I was left with a feeling of Hayden’s sound being no more or less complicated than tumbleweed playing in an Amarillo breeze. It had been a performance distilled to its very essentials: clarity, space and presence.