It is fewer than four months since Kristian Matsson, the Swedish singer-songwriter who performs as the Tallest Man on Earth, played a sold-out show at the capacious Hackney Empire in London. The Forum is even bigger, yet this room is also packed, with a gregarious crowd who obey every request for silence, cheerfully sing over him, and give a standing ovation at the end.

What's Matsson's secret? Musically, it is hard to tell. For all the influence of Bob Dylan, Nick Drake and their folk antecedents in his sound, he mostly comes across as a one-man Mumford & Sons, albeit replacing the biblical imagery with glimpses of the natural world. His voice has much the same husk and growl, his guitar-playing a similar formulaic attack as he flips between stampeding chords and fluttering arpeggios. When he sits behind the piano, for The Dreamer and There's No Leaving Now, what comes out is dreary 1970s-style AOR.

It hardly matters, because Matsson is transfixing to watch. He commands the huge Forum stage, contorting his limbs around his guitar as he propels himself hither and thither. The more he sings of deer and frogs, the more his music sounds like birdsong and the more he seems like some forest creature, prowling confidently across To Just Grow Away and Love Is All, creeping warily through Where Do My Bluebirds Fly, like a vulnerable thing afraid of being seen.

His animal magnetism stems from an open-hearted honesty. He avows his love for the audience so many times, he starts worrying that he's coming across "like a weird dickhead". The same humbleness imbues so many of his lyrics that even when he sings murder ballad The Gardener, it sounds like a charming tale of innocent romance.

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