Life on the Edge, With Singer Coyne

English singer Kevin Coyne is as colorful as he is obscure. When someone’s first Los Angeles appearance comes 30 years after his first album, you figure there’s some kind of story here.

That was the case with Coyne, who was welcomed to L.A. by a small audience of loyalists atSpaceland on Thursday--one more stop in one of pop history’s most unconventional careers.

Coyne surfaced with the London band Siren in the late ‘60s, displaying a compelling voice rooted in country blues basics. He also worked as a therapist with alcoholics and the mentally ill. When he began his solo career, his music reflected a fascination with people living on the edge--of society and of sanity.

Some 30 albums (most of them well-reviewed but spottily distributed) followed, along with hiatuses, marriage, kids, divorce, breakdowns, a relocation to Germany and some published poetry--all of it contributing to his stature as a cult figure of the first order.

At Spaceland, Coyne, 56, lived up to the legend, alternately cantankerous and ingratiating, indulgent and eloquent, always unpredictable. Accompanied by guitarist Michael Lipton, the rotund musician (who plans to release a new album in October) strummed bluesy patterns on his open-tuned guitar and set his strong, supple wail loose on stories of betrayal, obsession and madness.

“Marjory Razorblade,” the title song of his best-known cult album, was a little ditty about doing in the folks the singer imagines talking about him behind his back, and Coyne sang it with his eyes drilling the audience member who had requested it. In “Fish Brain,” he was a man describing his wife’s deteriorating mental condition, and he tagged a couple of songs with creepy, nursery-rhyme-like codas.

Every now and then he’d hoist himself to his feet and deliver a pungent, soul-style ballad, looking for all the world like a white-haired Rod Steiger doing a Joe Cocker impression. But his voice belied the Dickensian form, recalling Van Morrison in its improvisatory alertness, clenching and loosening as it groped for a solace it never found.