Joseph Arthur

Wed., Dec. 30, 9 p.m., $16, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.

by A.D. Amorosi

singer-songwriter

For the uninitiated, Joseph Arthur has a musical, vocal and lyrical vibe somewhere between Sam Prekop (with guts) Nick Drake (without the misty moors' weightiness or brow-beaten pain) and Peter Gabriel (without the fretless tech). Still, Arthur is his own man, with a uniquely burly sound. In fact, since he's started releasing his own albums and EPs (four of those in 2008 alone) on the Lonely Astronaut label, Arthur's been pushing an oddball agenda, hawking everything from drawings to poems to a coloring book filled with his outlines, Color Me Courageous. He knows you don't know everything about him, though. So before he polishes off his next album for 2010, Arthur's doing a one-man show where he'll electronically loop his "hits" (e.g. "Big City Secrets," "Temporary People"), lend acoustic guitar husk to his as-yet-unreleased songs, show some A/V stuff behind him and generally introduce you to his mad and insular world.