Dessa @ Soup Kitchen, 10 Aug

Just a few songs into what eventually develops into an epic and euphoric event, Dessa pauses to check in with a full and expectant house. "It's always hard to read a room, Manchester, but..." She squints to the back of the room. "You're with me, right?" Manchester is with her and Manchester offers loud reassurance.

The Minneapolis rapper could be forgiven for noting, early on, that Soup Kitchen isn't quite bouncing. But by the time the place has warmed up, and an opening salvo of Matches to Paper Dolls, new song Quinine and the stark family portrait Children's Work ('My father was a paper plane / My mother was a windswept tree') has torched the cobwebs, all bets are off.

Dessa's live set-up for this rare UK solo visit is stripped-back but clinically effective. Accompanied by "friend, collaborator and tour bed-mate" Aby Wolf (who contributes much tonight and whose solo performance of her own Out of the Way, while Dessa heads to the bar for whisky, is a breathless high spot), she mixes music, poetry and wry asides ("Thanks to the guy who brought me lens solution – a show with glasses is no show at all, right?") while nudging up both intensity and temperature.

WIth the crowd fully engaged, the second half of the set explodes: Dixon's Girl, Fighting Fish, a brutal Seamstress ('I came to drown my sorrows / Seems they've learned to swim'). Dessa's lyric book mixes agit observation with sharp confessional and it's some trick to make the latter bloom amidst programmed beats and the clatter of Wolf's percussion. But Dessa's communication skills are second to none and Manchester hangs on every word – credit to the front row devotee who mouths every word back at her. Poetry. Drama. Action. Heart. A happening and a spectacle. Add this one to the 'I was there' list.