Kristin Hersh @ Gorilla, Manchester, 13 Nov

From up on Gorilla's balcony, minutes before Kristin Hersh takes to the stage, a genuine and perfectly reasonable question from the young sound guy: "Have you seen her before?" Seen her before? Everyone here tonight, every connected and affected heart and mind, will have, at some point over the past three decades, seen her before.

This is how it goes with Hersh. Whether it be as the (still) ferocious leader of Throwing Muses (weathering as well as any of the US's late 80s alt-rock pioneers), the force behind occasional power trio 50 Foot Wave or – as tonight – dialled down and intimate (with just guitar, book and voice to tell her stories), Hersh inspires a loyalty that brooks no argument. She comes to town, you just go. You just do.

Tonight's show is part of a month-long tour in support of Wyatt at the Coyote Palace, a two-disc solo recording brought to vivid and extraordinary life by its accompanying book. Last time she was here, with her half sister Tanya Donnelly once again fleshing out Throwing Muses to an electrifying four-piece, the walls shook. Tonight, she favours campfire intimacy over volume, and simply sits, talks, plays. "Before I left home," she confides early on, "my friends told me not to play any new songs." She shrugs and smiles before playing a new song (Bright.) In truth, she plays only a handful of tracks from the new record and, though the merch stall is piled up with copies, most of the audience will already know their way around it and not be of a mind to complain anyway.

"This is the new record." Hersh holds up a copy of Wyatt... and whispers, "Don't look at it." As if it might be alive. As if it might shrink from too much attention. A rare outing for Muses b-side City of the Dead diverts that attention. Your Ghost appears as if from nowhere, a spectral presence as ever – everyone fills in the Michael Stipe part, if only in their head. Before Mississippi Kite, she falters a little, unexpectedly. "I'm getting choked up," she confesses and then settles. "Crying's for girls and I'm not one."

She surprises with You Cage, a novel in a two-word title, from way back. There could be more from the Muses repertoire, of course, but fingers-crossed wishes go unanswered. And good for her, to be fair. A sharp re-imagining of Hersh's late friend Vic Chesnutt's Bakersfield is preceded by a reading from the book she wrote about his life and the times they shared. "It's called Don't Suck, Don't Die, because that's something we promised each other we'd never do." 30 years after she first shook our senses, Kristin Hersh's word is as good as her bond.