Todd Rundgren played a two-hour set at Cadogan Hall, London, and the 78-year-old proved as confounding as ever: astonishing range, stretches of middling rock, and finally a run of gorgeous acoustic songs capped by a slinky Marvin Gaye cover.

Rundgren has spent five decades defying category. His tune-packed 1972 album Something/Anything? drew comparisons to Carole King and Brian Wilson. His response was to take, as one account puts it, "a pharmacopoeia of psychedelics" and make a vexing masterpiece, A Wizard, a True Star, containing no singles at all.

The contradictions have compounded since. He produced classic albums by Meat Loaf and the New York Dolls. He also released a record of nothing but vocals, A Cappella, and the world's first interactive album, No World Order. Counting only the artists who appeared on his last two albums, his admirers include Trent Reznor, Robyn and the Lemon Twigs. He titled his memoir, bluntly, The Individualist.

At Cadogan Hall he looked the part. Addams Family hair, tinted goggles and limber dance moves suggested a goth raver. Everything he said carried a teasingly sarcastic edge — even his thanks to the audience for spending their "discretionary income" on a ticket.

The show's one structural frustration was conversational, not musical. Rundgren told the crowd the venue's curfew meant he couldn't tell stories about the songs. It was a self-imposed trade that misfired: sacrificing a couple of the set's stodgier numbers would have been worth it to hear those stories instead.

The first portion of the two-hour performance bogged down in middling rock. The redemption came late, when Rundgren turned to stripped-back acoustic songs — gorgeous, unhurried, and closer to the melodic invention that first earned him comparison with King and Wilson. A slinky cover of Marvin Gaye closed the arc on a high.

For an artist who has made a career of refusing to settle, the evening's lesson was double-edged. The range remains astonishing at 78; the self-editing does not. Fans who want the full picture of Rundgren's restless catalogue — from A Wizard, a True Star onward — will still find it in the records, where the freak flag flies without curfew.