With her excellent new album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, released earlier this month, there’s now a musical imperative to hear Sinéad O’Connor — a woman who has become better known for what she says than what she sings.

Away from the break-ups and breakdowns, Saturday night’s show — part of the Women of the World festival — was a fabulous reminder of O’Connor the musician.

Her shaven head was covered by a red hat but her soul was laid bare in these unflinching songs of romantic and religious turmoil.

Things began with the Celtic mysticism of The Healing Room, before the galloping I Had A Baby put her seven-piece band through its paces.

Lyrically, O’Connor still favours the sledgehammer approach but there are few artists who can express such extremes of emotion — from arms-aloft joy on The Wolf Is Getting Married, to utter devastation on Nothing Compares 2 U.

An a capella version of I Am Stretched On Your Grave was note perfect, while The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance was much more inviting than “the musical version of a horseshit pizza” it was billed as. Brilliantly intense and intensely brilliant: O’Connor is back.