IF you could sum up how a gig should lift you, would the opening words of David Gray's new album Mutineers suffice?

"Every day when I open my eyes now, it feels like a Saturday," exhaults the Sale singer-songwriter on the rejuvenating single Back In The World.

Wednesday's gig was that Saturday feeling, a full house uplifted and on its feet, arms stretched out wide like Gray's own at the stage edge, never mind that his past songs had often travelled to the dark end of the pier.

After 21 years, Gray tore up that past for studio album number ten by instructing producer Andy Barlow, "Don't let me make the same record again", when weary of his old tropes, maddened by his method. Such reinvigoration spilled over into his two-hour show that had the power of an epiphany.

Back In The World came early, song three, by which time Gray had said he would concentrate on the new album first, opening with the stirring, high-rising Birds Of The High Arctic and sombre Gulls.

He had a big band around him, among them Irish back-up singer Naimh in her first show outside Ireland and Irish support act David Kitt on guitar, plus an exquisite cellist, double-bass player and keyboardist.

All but the drummer sang, making for a choir of seven voices in the emotional swell of so many of the songs, although Gray remained the focal point, whether at the piano or on guitar or unencumbered by either, when this poetic man with the boxer's face threw moves like a vintage soul man, an Otis Redding or a Wilson Pickett.

He thanked the audience for their patience as he concluded his Mutineers showcase with Girl Like You, but there had been no impatience. Mutineers is Gray's best work in years at 46; he knew it, the audience knew it too, giving him carte-blanche to showcase its full plumage (leaving out only Beautiful Agony and The Incredible).

"Just me and you," he winked, as the band departed for a solo acoustic interlude that did become him and us and his guitar for Shine and his signature song Babylon. "Come on York," he exhorted, house lights up for everyone to sing with him. That Saturday feeling hit you again.

The hits then flowed, from The One I Love to the set-closing Please Forgive Me before the encore heartache of This Year's Love and Sail Away. Gray days have never been better.