In a converted church where the wooden pews are packed with true believers, Conor Oberst is having a semi-serious rant. “Maybe you heard?” he asks. “Springsteen’s been doing my riff.” He’s referring to the Boss ribbing Donald Trump while playing in Australia. Like many US musicians currently on tour, Oberst feels obliged to try to decode what is happening at home.

Over the course of 14 albums in various musical guises, the prolific Nebraskan has written songs wistful, literary and lustful, creating a hardscrabble canon of heart-on-sleeve vignettes that have helped countless fans through difficult times. In person, during an 18-song, two-hour acoustic guitar/piano set that is heavy on harmonica and material from his skeletally stripped-back 2016 album Ruminations, he proves to be impassioned and entertainingly abrasive company.

Back when he recorded as Bright Eyes, Oberst wrote When the President Talks to God, a pointed protest song aimed squarely at George W Bush. Tonight, after a prolonged, exasperated rant about the current Potus, he segues into A Little Uncanny, a looser, countrified rocker that namechecks Ronald Reagan and kicks off with a line about drinking Kool-Aid.

Later, he throws in covers of Gillian Welch and the Felice Brothers (“My favourite band in the world”), but things really get raucous when he returns to his Bright Eyes days, resurrecting Lua in a magnetic duet with his support act Phoebe Bridgers and inspiring dancing in the aisles with a thumping rendition of At the Bottom of Everything. It is an uplifting end to an enjoyably prickly evening.