"I can't sing this fucking depressing song!" Mark Eitzel is onstage at Whelans of Wexford Street, alone in front of a capacity crowd, and it's all a bit too much for him to take. The singer-songwriter from San Francisco - and former leader of The American Music Club - has already taken us on a slow, painful trip through the emotional darklands, and now he's starting to feel the emptiness within.

But Eitzel presses on, cracking jokes and making light of his music's heavy subject matter: "I see the Spice Girls are in Dublin - well, I'm Grumpy Spice", he announces before wrenching another heart-breaking tune from deep within his bitter soul.

An innocent passerby might think Mark Eitzel a bit of a whiner. And, when he sings, his cry of anguish can grate on the nerves. But underneath that impotent roar is a fertile stock of lyrical ideas, and just when you think you've become inured to Eitzel's pained, passionate style, he cuts through your thick skin with a killer couplet and a sharply-aimed metaphor.

His set mostly comprises songs from his current album, Caught In A Trap And I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much Baby, and indeed Eitzel looks trapped onstage, with just an acoustic guitar and a bottle of beer, unable to escape the unpalatable truth which his tunes will inevitably tease out. White Rosary, Are You The Trash? and If I Had A Gun are gentle, compassionate songs, but there's also a cruel honesty to them.

"You want me to dance on the fucking table?" asks Eitzel after one particularly poignant tune; he then climbs on to a table and performs Johnny Mathis' Feet without the aid of a microphone while a delighted crowd sings along. Perhaps he's not such a grumpy old Spice after all.