Obviously acutely aware that the confessional singer-songwriter is an easy target, Damien Rice fires a self-critical salvo within two minutes of walking on stage. "This is a song about musicians, their friends and the people they hang around with," he announces, before launching into Childish. The slight, thirtysomething Dubliner with both knees out of his jeans may claim to be "a stormy little singer, an unstable little swinger", but tonight's show proves otherwise. With his natural candour and relaxed demeanour, Rice is markedly different from the hordes of whingeing, worthier-than-thou blokes who have somehow come to characterise the new acoustic movement.

Rice's closest contemporary is David Gray, but anyone expecting just an earnest, post-millennial diarist is in for a surprise. He draws heavily on his debut album, O, but thankfully the songs - filled out by bass, drums, cello and vocal accompanist Lisa Hannigan - are barely recognisable from their strained recorded selves. Helped by connection to a live audience, his voice proves capable of such a wide range of emotional expressions that you begin to wonder exactly who the real Rice is.

Older Chests adopts the mournfully mellow tones of James Taylor, but Cannonball is Elton John circa Tumbleweed Connection, while a chilly Cold Water segues straight into a wigged-out cover of Leonard Cohen's exultant Hallelujah. And the chameleon act doesn't stop there: in the space of 90 minutes, Rice and gang carouse through Southern-fried boogie, French chansoner, hammering blues, funk, glowering neo-gothic, one rendition of If You Go Away remade as a mazurka and a radically subverted take on Silent Night, delivered by Hannigan only after she has broken open the fortune cookies thrown at her feet.

There are as many unhinged, distortion-drenched rock-outs as moments of acoustic guitar-led introspection. On one occasion a radio mic throws Rice's voice off-centre while a wah-wah pedal goes into overdrive; minutes later, the sweat-soaked singer is grinning his way through some roiling blues epic before swinging into a stomping cover of Prince's Kiss. Repeated calls from a partisan crowd for Billie Jean suggest that's not the only cover up Rice's sleeve, but he calls it a night with a startlingly visceral finale, all of which suggests that committed miserabilists should probably find another doorstep to weep on.