Bright Eyes, Komedia, Brighton

The sound of darkness

I believe this is what they call organised chaos. Once they've finally arrived on stage, it takes a full five minutes for the members of Bright Eyes to get themselves sorted out. There are 11 people crammed into this small space, armed with double that number of instruments. Flutes, drums, mandolins, horns, cellos, banjos, accordions and guitars are scattered around the place like toys in a playpen. Between every song, there is a flurry of activity as musicians top up their wine glasses and swap instruments. Others disappear altogether for a furtive smoke off stage.

This isn't the kind of show you see every day. Amid the disorder, there are times when the band's guiding light and singer, Conor Oberst, appears so fragile you have to suppress the desire to call an ambulance. On other occasions he's so loudly bellicose that you wonder whether the police would be more appropriate. It's likely that this tall, lean and obscenely handsome 22-year-old wouldn't be a barrel of laughs at a party, but he's a mesmerising performer.

Oberst hails from Nebraska, where he's been making music since the age of 13. This year's preposterously titled Lifted: Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground is Bright Eyes' fifth album, and it finds the singer pulverising his vocal cords in a collection of wildly embittered songs that tackle such thorny issues as love, creativity, sex and suicide. It's possible that Oberst's pseudo-Gothic agonising will wear out a generation weaned on Nirvana but, for the moment, his sincerity is a breath of fresh air.

Hiding behind a long thick fringe, Oberst twitches, hisses and yells his way through the show. Lyrically, his songs are devastating in their bleakness, revealing the world-weariness of a person three times his age. Musically, he and his band call to mind myriad tortured souls, among them Will Oldham, Mark Eitzel, Leonard Cohen and, of course, Kurt Cobain. Through the 12 songs there are several false starts – before one track Oberst strides across the stage searching for an appropriate instrument before soothing his scorched voice with a swig of red wine. Later on, as he struggles to find the right opening note, he invites us to throw tomatoes. It's the only time in the evening that our host manages to crack a smile.

Bright Eyes play Queens University, Belfast, tonight; Whelan's, Dublin, tomorrow; Night and Day, Manchester, Mon; Dingwalls, London, Tue