With her baggy trousers, man's waistcoat and butch haircut, Kathryn Dawn Lang didn't bother to bring any glamour to this one-off show to mark her first proper album in eight years.

At 46, the Canadian country and pop balladeer is embracing middle age with Watershed, a masterfully understated collection of new songs that reflects her happy relationship and conversion to Buddhism several years ago.

It all seems a long way from her early Nineties role as the face of lesbian chic, which culminated in a Vanity Fair cover where she was in a barber's chair being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford.

But while the barefooted lang (who styles her name with lower case letters) smiled serenely between her first few songs, her fans seemed to want some flamboyance to accompany her perfectly pitched vocal. So there were wolf whistles and bawdy comments, including one remark - prompted by lang strapping on an acoustic guitar - that was so vulgar another artist might have stormed off stage.

However, lang joined in with the laughter and even provided some smut of her own. "This is quite an organ you have here, sir," she told one band member after enthusiastically introducing the group as her "boy toys".

The band, including a Brazilian guitarist who provided warming bossa nova textures on Upstream, certainly deserve credit for framing her songs with some subtle and adroit musicianship. But it was lang's astonishing voice that dominated: smooth and smoky, she switched easily from fragile to tumultuous, never being so crude as to simply belt out a tune.

It took a few songs to get going, but lang proved her new album was worth the wait on the evocative I Dream Of Spring and the sweetly seductive Coming Home.

Some older songs such as the gimmicky Smoke Rings were entertaining enough, although Constant Craving didn't quite have the required urgency.

However, lang amply compensated for any shortcomings with a magisterial cover of fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It wouldn't have got a more ecstatic reaction if Cohen himself had turned up to duet with her.

For the encore, she returned to her country sound with a barnstorming Pay Dirt, featuring a strange skipping dance. And she played banjo on the light-hearted Jealous Dog while her band huddled round to add harmonies.

Her comeback's happened at a time when the charts are crowded with female songwriters. But kd lang still easily outclasses many of her younger rivals.