LULU may have popped into York more often in recent years to plug her beauty products – she sang an impromptu Relight My Fire with Huge's Big Ian Donaghy on one such promotional trip to Fenwicks – but her first love, her mojo, is being on stage.

She should do it more often. Aside from some big-voiced girls' nights out with Anastacia and Chaka Khan, she is on her first tour in a decade and the previous one was all of 15 years earlier. Only two tours in 25 years? Imagine Kylie or Madonna performing so sparingly.

Nevertheless, when Lulu does come out to play, she makes it count, reasserting herself as Britain's supreme female white soul singer on each occasion.

Last time, in 2004, it was a greatest hits tour as well as promoting Back On Track, her "grungy" rock'n'roll record. This time, at 66, she has just picked up the best reviews of her career for her first self-penned album, Making Life Rhyme, co-written with brother Bill Lawrie.

In black and white, topped off with a trilby, she knows how to make an entrance, hold court and pace a show, opening with Republica's rallying call Ready To Go, before setting light anew to her Take That collaboration Relight My Fire and knocking out a sensationally good new soul single in Faith In You.

There in a nutshell was Lulu's sharp judgement of a set list: a knockout cover, a boy-band reminiscence and a fabulous return, played by an ace five-piece band with just the right contemporary edge and a retro grip on reinvigorating her past, such as David Bowie's Man Who Sold The World.

Lulu was keen to elucidate, with stories of songs old and new and frank thoughts on love's troubles, whether for a fresh arrangement of her song for Tina Turner, I Don't Wanna Fight, or insightful recollections of life with Maurice Gibb that accompanied the second half's opening salvo, an acoustic Bee Gees medley, with her band gathered in a crescent on chairs. The night's highlight.

She took risks too, reinventing To Sir With Love as a reggae-skank that "sits right in the pocket", before a home run of soul standards, with room of course for Shout, and an exhilarating finale of Edwin Starr's 25 Miles. Move over Florence and Paloma, Lulu has re-lit her fire.