The Broken Family Band boast two unique selling points: they play mordant, dusty Americana despite hailing from the alt.country heartland of Cambridge, and they hold down full-time jobs in spite of consistent critical acclaim. On the latter point, at least, they remain happily defiant: "My boss gave me 10 minutes more for my lunch break today," singer Steven Adams informs a rammed venue, "because this gig is Time Out's pick of the week."

The group's latest album, last year's Hello Love, saw them move away from the existential country and western that has made their name, but their songs' visceral heft remains intact. They major in understated, emotionally and intellectually literate mini-dramas that dissect the minutiae of flawed relationships with a sly irony that prevents the material from dissolving into cloying sentimentality.

They examine love from all angles. Supremely diffident between numbers, Adams comes alive yelping a song such as Leaps, a cathartic rush mirroring the exhilaration of the first flush of infatuation. Give and Take is the other side of the romantic coin, a Calexico-like wry musing on the heartache of rejection that is elevated by black humour and dextrous wordplay.

Their older material tends to squint at the world through a glass darkly, and the rollicking The Booze and the Drugs elicits whoops and an audience sing-a-long. They are even more affecting on John Belushi, Adams fully inhabiting its maudlin celebration of a broken life lived fitfully and of regrets well earned. If the Broken Family Band remain as potent as this, there appears no need to give up the day job at all.

· At Barfly, Cambridge, on January 31. Box office: 08448 472424. Then touring.