You could forgive Courtney Marie Andrews for turning this show into a victory lap. In fact you might expect it. Her sixth album, May Your Kindness Remain, has been appearing high on best-of-2018 lists, and her live shows with her band have been marvels of Americana. But the band isn’t present for this one, and the album is just a tiny part of the show. Instead, she says at the start, this is her chance to play some old songs, a couple of brand new ones, and tell some stories.

In the first of the new songs, It Must Be Someone Else’s Fault, you hear a writer using words with precision, each one as clear and clean as the notes of the guitar, asking an ex-lover about an old rock band: “Do they still play / Or did they fall apart like we did / And go their separate ways?” It cuts deeper than something like Woman of Many Colours, from five years ago, where the metaphors are less directed and more gauzy.

She complains about a cold, but you’d barely know had she not mentioned it: her voice is a marvel of a thing, a melting icicle. Then BJ Cole joins her on pedal steel – the butter of instruments; not something you want much of on its own, but pretty much guaranteed to improve anything it’s added to – and the songs begin to unfurl and bloom. When three backing singers join in for the final three songs, the flowering is complete. But it’s Andrews’ show: she unplugs her guitar and walks to the floor of the church to end the set with May Your Kindness Remain, and the silence in the audience is almost ecstatic.

• At the Glee Club, Birmingham, 4 December. The touring the UK until 12 December.