Conor Oberst @ Albert Hall, Manchester, 2 Feb

Conor Oberst, we sense, is a pretty decent guy. Not only does he give his audience two decent supports – in the shape of Miwi La Lupa (imagine PM Dawn’s late frontman Prince Be reincarnated as a solo REM covers band) and Phoebe Bridgers (plaintive LA-based singer performing material not a million miles away from Mary Lou Lord), respectively – he has both supports on the stage with him during both of his sets. That’s right, both of his sets.

Oberst comes to the stage looking like a young Michael Shannon and sits at the piano for the first couple of numbers, Tachycardia and Gossamer Thin from last year’s album, Ruminations. Initially, things don’t altogether gel. Over the course of a single song (the otherwise beautiful Cape Canaveral), he can hit and miss notes, fashion a transcendent acoustic noise and twang a string by accident with his thumb. A Heisenberg-esque figure lurks on the side of the stage, a Lee Strasbourg to Oberst’s Monroe, cleaning out harmonicas and providing the occasional shoulder pat and word, we presume, of comfort and encouragement.

It isn’t until the song Ten Women from the 2009 album, Outer South (when Oberst was performing alongside the Mystic Valley Band), six or seven songs in, that the evening hits its stride. Oberst and La Lupa sharing vocal duties to splendid effect, and from this point, the evening is awash in high points: a cover of Gillian Welch’s Everything is Free; a spirited rendition of Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out; what Oberst calls the title track of Ruminations despite the fact that the song in question is called Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch). Perhaps best of all is a version of Lua from Bright Eye’s I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning on which he grants Bridgers the larger part of the vocals. A lady on the front row is reduced to tears.

Yes, we miss the cover of The Replacement’s Here Comes a Regular played on other nights of the tour, just as we miss the long preamble to At the Bottom of Everything which ends the night – but these are minor asides. Anything but high praise feels churlish.