"Mark Oliver Everett," boomed an all-powerful voice over the Dome speakers. "This is your life."

"Okay," shrugged the singer at the piano, dressed in overalls with his face masked by a baseball cap. "Weird."

So began An Evening With Eels, possibly frontman E's most intimate and autobiographical tour to date, underlined by a pre-show screening of the BBC documentary about E's physicist father whose ideas were ahead of their time.

For more than 90 minutes E and multi-instrumentalist The Chet tackled a stripped-down selection of some of E's most personal songs, ranging from his sister's attempted suicide in Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor to the achingly beautiful goodbye to his father, Last Time We Spoke.

To the apparent disgust of a few vocal "rock-lovers" in the crowd who seemed intent on destroying the hushed atmosphere, the pair lightened the mood between songs with tongue-in-cheek readings of fan mail, reviews and sections from E's new autobiography.

There was also a smattering of reworked favourites, including a brilliant extended jam on Flyswatter, with E and The Chet switching places on the drums mid-song.

A handful of new songs, including Strawberry Blonde and After The Operation, showed E's muse is still alive and well.