There are two names on the outside of the venue, and the evening’s bearded, avuncular star is aware of the absurdity of this situation. “Who have you come to see?” he asks. “Yusuf or Cat Stevens?”

Whatever his name is, he has one of the most singular backstories in contemporary music history. Cat Stevens was a truly engaging and prolific singer-songwriter until 1979 when he converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusuf Islam and vanished from the music industry for 27 years – an absence that he jocularly refers to tonight as “taking a short break”.

He was quite a loss. The first of the two sets that he plays here shows that, at his peak, he had an almost McCartney-esque gift for sublime melodies and whimsical, big-hearted lyricism. Quicksilver ditties such as Wild World and the yearning, open-wound The First Cut is the Deepest are insatiable, intoxicatingly breathless folk-pop. The delicately reflective Moonshadow could even give hippy mysticism a good name.

The tone shifts in the second half of the evening when he showcases his new album, Tell ’Em I’m Gone. It’s a tribute to the deep south R&B he loved in his youth, but his nimble talent is buried beneath its bluesy plod.

His own material such as I Was Raised in Babylon and Gold Digger is little more than adequately generic; the covers of Procol Harum’s The Devil Came from Kansas and the 1930s standard You Are My Sunshine are superfluous.

The audience listens patiently and politely, but the roars that greet the set-closing Father and Son and a rambunctious encore Peace Train answer the question that Yusuf Islam posed at the start of the night. They have come to see Cat Stevens.

• Tonight only. Box office: 020-8563 3800. Venue website: Eventim Apollo.