Summer in the city: Courtney Barnett live in London

Tonight (13 July) the courtyard of Somerset House is a fittingly regal setting for Barnett’s breakthrough show, yet a huge part of her charm is the lack of airs and graces - she plays it as if it was a tiny pub, which makes for an incredibly intimate evening. And you instantly warm to her, there’s no rock star posturing, rather an unassuming talent intent on pleasing both herself and the audience. Over ninety minutes she waltzes through seventeen songs, which is quite something for an artist with just one album under her belt, last year’s tremendous Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. She even finds time to slip in a Grateful Dead cover.

Taking the stage with her trusty rhythm section of Bones Sloane and Dave Mudie she launches into the irresistibly catchy “Dead Fox” without preamble, but given that she half-speaks her wonderful lyrics it’s like she’s talking directly to the audience during the songs anyway.

Before “Depreston” she addresses the crowd for the first time with an easy going “Hey London, how’s it going? Is anyone here from Preston? Or Melbourne?” The song's tale of trying to buy a house in an extortionate market rings as true in England as it does Down Under. It’s also a showcase for the inventiveness of her lyrics, featuring snippets of a conversation with an estate agent alongside stories of what the furniture in the house says about the previous tenants.

Her signature tune “Pedestrian at Best” with its monster guitar riff has the raw power of a song like The Stooges’ “Loose”, the way she snarls the last word of the line “I’ll only disappoint you…” is ferociously feral. Yet it’s songs like “Kim’s Caravan” that are her natural milieu - elongated blues compositions that steadily uncoil, she screams the closing words before falling to her knees and losing herself playing her beloved guitar. Such blues is also beautifully evident on the seven minutes plus of “Small Poppies” where her fantastically guttural singing howls “I’ll make mistakes until I get it right, an eye for an eye for an eye...”

The closing “Avant Gardener” is a spacier take on the blues which flies into guitar pyrotechnics that are combined with the lyrics that make up her songs self-confessed internal dialogue, and that’s what makes them great – her internal dialogue is entirely relatable.

She returns for the first encore on her own with “Ode to Odetta”, played for the first time in two years, a pastoral, campfire lament which is just lovely. They finish with a riotous “Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party” which has the freewheeling freneticism of The Who at their peak, prompting the crowd to dance along to her mix of her blues and pop sensibility. It’s a brilliant way to close the set, with her ferocious guitar playing accompanied by her deadpan vocal.

Whilst Barnett embraces her songs’ characters in her videos - the tennis player of “Avant Gardener” the clown of “Pedestrian at Best” and most recently a bellhop in “Elevator Operator” - live she’s simply herself, likeable and reserved but with a wit as acute as her lyrics, at one point she quips “I feel like the Queen should be watching.” Tonight was a celebration of a masterful songwriter and guitar player taking the status of being a major live draw in her stride. Even the weather agreed.