Down The Dustpipe, Royal Festival Hall, London, ***

For this two-night festival of his favourite British pop, the American former Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus assembled a bill of largely awkward and introverted, lost artists who influenced others, then fell between the cracks themselves. They also reveal the British part of Malkmus's own musical DNA. When he introduces the whole affair accompanied by a gurning, badly dancing goon, you know that, like Pavement, it won't be plain sailing.

The first night begins with two genuine British icons playing to a half-empty hall. Mark Perry edited the punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue, and his band, Alternative TV, keep the spirit alive with a rousing, playful, politicised set. When Perry is followed by Bert Jansch, who, with his Sixties band Pentangle, was one of the founding legends of British folk-rock, the mood changes to something more nervously intimate. When you watch Jansch's large hands caress his guitar, forcing jarring, angry accelerations, an English master is clearly at work.

Graham Coxon, in his first major gig since his exit from Blur, is even more uncomfortable on stage and, you'd imagine, in his head. Hunched, voice thin and flat, he performs in a naive style that would be laughed off if he hadn't been a pop star. When his new band slip on and play rasping guitar pop, his playing improves. By the end, he is making layered, discordant music of worth, but he still seems a splinter of the band he left.

The same could be said of Malkmus, who closes both nights with his new band, the Jicks. He's a lanky figure, full of easy banter. No Pavement songs are attempted, but Malkmus's new record, Pig Lib, is a gently appealing set of woozy, jerky words and chord sequences much like he's always made. There are psychedelic instrumental sections, graceful ballads, guitars working busily, and an overall charm. But he rarely touches your heart.

The second night starts unpromisingly, too, with Tony McPhee's Groundhogs, who in 1970 were an alienated aberration among their prog-blues peers. Now, they play pointless sludge. Vashti Bunyan is far better. She vanished after her one, 1970 album of chamber folk, Just Another Diamond Day, and this is her first performance for 30 years. Her voice drifts intimately, as if she is singing to herself. She too seems lost inside her head; perhaps a reason many of Malkmus's picks fascinate, but communicate to few.

Super Furry Animals follow, with a summery, punk-inflected set. They play eardrum-scraping noise and bucolic reveries, and are generally fine. But after they're done, the weekend really peaks. Outside, the punk maverick Billy Childish plays a pile-driving set of crude blues, dressed as a Victorian sergeant-major. As unexpected and English as Johnny Rotten playing Butlins, it's a fitting finish.