Live Review: Conor Oberst, Miwi La Lupa

Miwi La Lupa played a short, five-song warm-up set prior to playing with the main act. While his tunes were simple, they had a strength born from his impressive vocal force, as demonstrated during his pensive outpouring of thoughts in I Yield.

La Lupa later returned as bass player for Nebraskan-born singer-songwriter Conor Oberst. While La Lupa actually stood centrestage, between Oberst's piano and acoustic guitars, his contribution was so unobtrusive and perfect it was easy to forget he was there, especially with Oberst in such commanding form. He delivered songs that were perfectly matched for the relatively intimate setting and, through opener Tachycardia, Oberst showed the kind of impassioned patience and tone reminiscent of REM's Michael Stipe. This song was one of a large number of songs from his recently released Ruminations album. Of those, Gossamer Thin was thick with feeling and Counting Sheep revelled in its own darkness.

While at times Oberst teetered on the edge of intensity and melodrama, at others he was simply mesmerising. This was particularly so during set highlight White Shoes — which was full of poetic imagery — and the slow, emotional power of Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch). An as-yet-unnamed new song, apparently only a couple of days old and laden with scathingly pessimistic lyrics, was a great taster of what's still to come.

It was Oberst's rich past that went down best though, with the biggest audience responses of the night reserved for songs recorded under his Bright Eyes moniker. The painfully beautiful Lua seemed to hang in the air while another, the rollicking At The Bottom Of Everything, closed the set and bounded through all the built-up emotion required to earn Oberst a well-deserved standing ovation.