Angel Olsen doesn’t say a word, just walks on and strums some Velvet Underground-esque guitar chords. But when she does open her mouth, the chattering crowd fall immediately under her spell. “Oh my God, I need you close,” she sings, her voice a giant quiver.

It’s been a similar story around the world as the Missouri-born singer’s two intense country/folk albums since 2012 have taken her from singing backup with Bonnie Prince Billy to packed houses such as this one. Her sources are painstakingly cool: the quivering fragility of Mazzy Star and Patsy Cline; an occasional boom-crash drumbeat as once heard on Phil Spector records; her delicately teased 60s fringe. She’s not big on chatter: mostly, she just stands perfectly still, aware of the power of her lonely aches of songs such as Acrobat, which could have been written for a David Lynch film.

At times, she can be too studied for her own good, although she does bring a different voice to what might otherwise be familiarly chugging indie rock. Her newest songs are usually superior, though, and while she’s recently gone more electric, she cuts deepest with just voice and guitar. The haunting White Fire – with its unlikely melodic nods to Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit and John Lennon’s Working Class Hero, and seeming references to Olsen’s adoption as a child – is delivered in barely a whisper. “I heard my mother thinking me right back into my birth / I laughed so loud inside myself it all began to hurt,” she sings as you can hear the proverbial pin drop. Then everybody cheers.