At his wildest moments, L.A. singer-songwriter Pete Yorn can be a real party animal, with teeth: One encounter with a record company executive ended when an intoxicated Yorn bit her in the arm. "That's a nice little follow-up," joked Matt Hales, aka Aqualung, as he and Yorn swapped drinking tales. Yorn's packed show at the Barrymore last night found the singer in a more subdued mood, but the audience still went wild with each flip of his well-kept mop. The "singer-songwriter" label gives a false impression of Yorn, who is also a frontman, bandleader and independent rock star in the tradition of fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen. His guitar-in-hand stewardship evoked Eddie Vedder as well, as he led the ear-splittingly loud show to a rousing climax. Yorn's new backup band Minibar opened the concert in front of a large but still-seated audience. As their name would imply, the British band played a set of unremarkable bar-band (pub-band?) rock, with a few amusingly polite asides in the roguish accent of frontman Simon Petty. It seemed that nearly everyone on the tour came from across the pond, as Aqualung followed his countrymen with his ambient brand of piano rock. Hales continued the night-on-the-tiles theme with a comedic drinking song, but the real highlight was his more serious material. Despite a boomy sound mix, Hales' vocals soared above the atmospheric groove of his band. His supple voice fit in somewhere between Thom Yorke's plaintive yowl and Harry Connick Jr.'s syrupy croon, occasionally veering toward either extreme. Likewise, Aqualung's lovelorn songs of love lost ranged from gloomy jazz ballads to kick-to-the-balls breakup numbers, but a light-and-dark sense of dynamics kept the drunken cheers to a minimum. When Yorn finally hit the stage, however, a crowd had already formed in the mosh pit, ready for something more upbeat. Yorn started the show with "Vampyre," the first track of his new album Nightcrawler. The album is Yorn's third studio release and the final entry in a trilogy organized around the theme of one day as metaphor for life in general. Yorn said he didn't set out with a preconceived notion of what the theme would be but rather let it develop over the course of the records. The songwriter found his own growth in perspective and experience mirrored the course of a day. "The morning I view as a time of innocence," Yorn explained in a pre-show interview. "The day is a slightly later period; you're up and doing it. Night is not necessarily an end, but it's almost a little bit of perspective — I think the songs on Nightcrawler have more of a reflective quality." But Yorn said that all of his recordings center on the dynamics of love and relationships, presented in a different light each time. The singer said he's already recorded the 10 songs that will appear on his next album, a project on which Yorn limited himself mainly to a guitar, banjo and drum samples, following an idea he had after three nights of insomnia. It's a new approach for Yorn, who normally records 30 to 40 songs with a plethora of instruments played entirely by him, but one the artist said stays true to who he is. Despite the thought and energy he puts into writing and recording, Yorn said he probably enjoys touring even more. "My favorite part of the day is the show" he said. "I'm onstage and I'm like, 'Oh, I wish I was always this happy.'" Yorn has played live with artists like the Foo Fighters, Coldplay and REM, and he recently played drums on a set of Stooges covers with Iggy Pop and the Hives' Pelle Almqvist at an awards show in L.A. "That was just a freak show," he said, but also a great experience. Yorn only rehearsed once with Pop, who wanted to keep the set "raw." "I'm not into over-rehearsing either," Yorn said. Last night's show kept an attitude of spontaneity as Yorn worked through a set list that included hits like "Life on a Chain" and "Strange Condition," which was preceded by a gloomy live-show intro, as well as covers such as the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers." But despite a loose feel, Yorn and his band didn't stretch the limits, sticking mainly to the template of the recorded versions. The audience still loved it: Yorn came back out after the closer "Crystal Village" for an extensive encore that included "Splendid Isolation," a tune he recorded for Enjoy Every Sandwich: The Songs of Warren Zevon. Yorn finished the show with "For Nancy ('Cos It Already Is)," leading the crowd in the ending chant "Take…him…home." Not quite as wild as a bite in the arm, but a rousing conclusion nonetheless.