With songs about stalkers, suicide and mining-related illnesses, Cowboy Junkies' second album, The Trinity Session, was probably always destined for cult status.

Twenty years after the Canadian band recorded it in a Toronto church, this congregation was noticeably thin for the performance of the record as part of the Don't Look Back series.

"It's a very weird album," singer Margo Timmins told the audience, admitting her band deserved their reputation for being "depressed and melancholy". Perhaps that explained the failure to sell out.

But it was clearly a life-affirming event for the devotees, particularly men of a certain age whose gaze never wavered from Timmins. At one point she described her bandmates, including two brothers, as "crabby old men", and there were surely a few of them in the audience, too.

Despite a certain understated glamour, Timmins looked like someone who was ready for the school run rather than a gig.

However, her silky voice was spellbinding, and her slightly mumsy manner - she sipped tea and shimmied awkwardly - didn't detract from the elemental power of the sparse blues and alt-country.

Special guest Ryan Adams added some edgy vitality to proceedings, playing guitar and supplying his brooding vocal when required. In fact, Adams has probably never sounded better than on the heartfelt cover of Hank Williams's I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry and the country tune 200 More Miles.

For much of the evening, Cowboy Junkies had all the timeless splendour you'd expect from a truly cult act, not least during their mellow interpretation of The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane.

But there was the nagging feeling that The Trinity Session was possibly a fluke in their 21-year career. That suspicion only intensified during a new song, My Little Basquiat, which turned out to be a thoroughly pretentious take on soft rock.