Perhaps chastened by his performance the night before, Ryan Adams played the kind of set the long-suffering fan deserves. Wantonly flaunting the state-wide smoking ban on stage, he talked to the audience, (“I love open mouth country” was how he kissed off Tim McGraw after a gorgeous take on When The Stars Go Blue ), rocked the mic sans guitar and generally reinstated his rockstar credentials – without resorting to any of the antics which earn him the reputation as an unreliable, but more often brilliant live performer.

But let’s talk about the band: The Cardinals clearly love playing together, and exhibit that enviable mix of spontaneity and exquisite musicianship. To witness the four-part harmonies on Cold Roses is a truly spine-chilling experience, and you could hear the reverential silence descend over the Enmore. Lapsteel, piano and duelling guitars all laid over the brilliant solidity of drummer Brad Pemperton – who, equally adept at driving grooves, a solid four on the floor, or the delicacy of brushed playing, whispering like a ghost beneath tender tracks like Friends.

Again the show didn’t feature lights on the players for most of the evening, though a purple-tinged red bathed the band from time to time. Somewhere along the way to almost writing himself off completely, Ryan Adams has become a singer of rare par: tempering his range with screaming, sliding into falsetto and fitting huge amounts of words into on-the-fly deliveries which recalled early comparisons made between he and Bob Dylan.

The band played an almost completely different set from the night before, as a cache of over 100 songs to choose from will allow. Reaching back to Heartbreaker and stopping off at Gold and 29 along the way, the night drew heavily again from Cold Roses – which is looking to be the masterwork of his oeuvre so far. The incomparable Let it Ride from that record, with its self loathing (27 years of nothing but failures and promises that I couldn’t keep) and self belief (“But I wasn’t ready to go/I’m never ready to go/Let it ride”) in equal measure summed up the contradictions in Adams which make him such a powerful songwriter.

The only complaint would be that the performance was short by Mr Adams’ standards, at and hour and a half. But to see he and the band having fun on stage for the duration of that time was reward in itself. This is the kind of music that reassures your faith in rock ‘n’ roll.