It was billed as an Intimate Evening With Lucinda Williams and, boy, was that the understatement of the year.

Few singers expose their emotions so nakedly as America’s premier chronicler of heartache and betrayal.

Yet Williams is a diffident, even uneasy, figure on stage.

The Louisiana country-rocker’s two-hour show took a while to find its feet, despite kicking off with her Grammy-winning Passionate Kisses and the early inclusion of Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, the brilliant title track of the album that made her name.

Williams, 60, had sound problems – it all seemed fine to us – and halted things to get the smoke machine switched off (“Sure… if we were Whitesnake.”) But once she’d found her groove with the rocking I Lost It, everything took off. Backed by guitar and bass but no drummer, the rest of the show was Williams at her best – the downbeat stoicism of country married to the emotional release of hard-riffing Stonesy rock, all wrapped in that wonderful honey-and-gravel voice.

Highlights were Essence, Blue, Joy and Change The Locks. New number Something Wicked This Way Comes suggested long-awaited marital bliss hasn’t dented her creativity.

The encore was Nick Drake’s River Man. The virginal Drake and hard-lovin’ Lucinda may seem odd bedfellows, but Williams made it her own.