Amy Rigby @ The Waiting Room, Stoke Newington, London, 17.11.24

Stoke Newington boozer The Three Crowns hides a funky little secret. Upstairs, it's a pretty conventional drinker: but downstairs, thanks to the people behind east London indie mecca the Shacklewell Arms, 120-capacity gig and club space The Waiting Room hosts all manner of goodies. Stokey resident Caribou recently held a four-day residency to celebrate his new album, f'rinstance.

Tonight's bill has attracted a certain demographic: your reviewer is no spring chicken but may well be the youngest gig-goer here. These oldies know the score: despite her CBGBs-attending punk rock past, Amy Rigby's songs forsake rock'n'roll mythologising for an examination of life's nitty-gritty details, told with a diarist's eye and a witty, no-bullshit attitude. The songs are a hooky, three-minute mesh of garage-rock realness, Tom Petty-esque classic rock, kitchen-sink confessional indie and country-tinged balladeering. Most stick in your head after just a listen or two... delivered by someone who looks like Chrissie Hynde's cool younger sister.

Support act Simon Love performs a solo acoustic set. Your reviewer saw Love in a prior incarnation, as his band wowed a Jeffrey Lewis audience with foppishly ambitious technicolour pop: life-affirming, excellent and proudly OTT. Tonight he is in 60s classicist pop mode: conventional, pretty song structures topped with self-deprecating, storytelling lyrics. He's a funny guy, as Joe Pesci would say.

Highlights include crowd participation fave Motherfuckers; L-O-T-H-A-R-I-O, a bathetic epic about a failed one-night stand; and a Christmas song that interpolates Stones classic The Last Time (...'I don't know-ho-ho...'). We end on a high with a cover of late Silver Jews frontman David Berman's hilariously bleak That's Just The Way That I Feel, from his final album, as Purple Mountains ('I met failure in Australia'). Us indie-rock types, who fetishise failure, cheer him off.

Amy Rigby arrives onstage flanked by hubby and frequent collaborator Eric Goulden on bass - better-known to those of a certain vintage as Wreckless Eric (you know, the Stiff Records icon who sang Whole Wide World). He is a geezerish delight, and the pair's chemistry and banter is a lovely thing to witness. We should all be so lucky. Drummer Ian Button completes the trio, whose 'don't play anything fancy' approach is just the ticket. What are you doing playing all those extra chords, people? This ain't jazz...!

Around half the set comes from Amy's recent, tenth, solo album Hang In There With Me. It got deservedly rave reviews, including from me, with songs on living through death and disaster and coming out the other side bruised but unbowed.

Hell-Oh Sixty is a strong opener, Amy on acoustic as she ruefully surveys her life's staging posts: does she look ahead with dread or interest? How should we age? What does it mean? Argh! The album's single, Bricks, rocks, its stop-start arrangements showing off a tight, well-drilled band. Her voice is a tad croaky early on but soon warms up.

Playing Pittsburgh, a garagey chug about the ambivalent feelings inspired by returning to play a gig in your hometown, interpolates a bit of Sister Sledge classic We Are Family. We weren't expecting that and neither were the audience, who scotch Amy's best efforts to get a crowd participation thing going. However, the crowd is up for it nevertheless and the vibe abides. Too Old to be So Crazy features some really great vocal phrasing and chord changes. The crowd has been on Amy's side from the first chord but this one seems to kick the set into a higher gear.

Dylan in Dubuque is possibly your reviewer's favourite: a funky-as-hell riff underpinning a paean to a legendary homecoming gig by the great man that ended up with half the crowd onstage. As with Dylan himself, Amy's phrasing rings multiple shades of meaning out of the lyrics. Our heroine writes books as well as songs: she is currently revising a follow-up to her well-reviewed memoir Girl to City and she reads a couple of pieces. They concern meeting a guy in CBGBs in 1976 and talking disco and acne scars; and coming to London in 1980 as a student ('Zandra Rhodes loved my look!').

Amy is happy to big up her forebears: as well as Dylan, she pays tribute to 60 icons Nico and Marianne Faithfull (Bangs) and the coolest brudda of them all (Last night I was Dancing with Johnny Ramone). But while it is ace to see Amy rock out, it's when she lets her sensitive side show that the crowd melts. Anjelie offers succour to a friend whose dad has died way too soon, and it's a lovely thing. Abba's Bergmaensque late-period divorce anthem The Visitors is rocked-up; her 'novelty' anti-Trump tune The President Can't Read is sadly relevant once more; while Time For Me To Come Down is a song about abandoning bad habits and starting, tentatively, afresh.

At nearly two hours, the set shows off an impressively deep back catalogue. The two-song encore begins with Don't Play Danny Boy, the acoustic song she wrote for her dad's funeral. Her tears are assuaged by the return of hubby, and the duo play us out with audience fave Don't Ever Change, a reminder to us all to love the people closest to us - even when they are doing our heads in.

The whole set is inspiring: punk rock's DIY ethic, commitment to real emotional truth and unvarnished expression shines through every song here. Keeping it real for sure...