SINEAD O’Connor? Performing in a cathedral? Isn’t this the oft-troubled, rebellious Irish woman who once tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest at sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church and was ordained as a priest, Mother Bernadette Marie, by Bishop Michael Cox of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church?

Indeed it is, so who could resist the trans-Pennine journey to see the only northern English show of her five-date tour in support of her first album for five years, How About I be Me (And You Be You)?

Contrary, capricious and complex as she is, she inspires devotion, and so the nave of Manchester Cathedral was full on Thursday night, some sat in pews at the back, others swigging from beer bottles as they stood, most in their forties or fifties.

O’Connor has talked of depression and attempted suicide last year, but the woman in the lace-sleeved black top beneath the familiar shaven head was smiling as she fluffed lines twice in The Emperor’s New Clothes.

She smiled too, laughed as well, when saying sorry for her industrial language, although she continued to use it (not least when saying what her album title really meant).

The new record, her best since Universal Mother, dominated the 100-minute set, providing such new highs as the hushed Reason With Me and an impassioned cover of John Grant’s Queen Of Denmark, but O’Connor judiciously peppered the new with past peaks, a thrilling The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance and of course Nothing Compares 2 U, haunting cello, saucy cucumber gag and all.

At 45, the O’Connor voice is a mighty, mighty instrument, tender but volatile, sensual and enraptured, and when unaccompanied on I Am Stretched On Your Grave, it rose to the heavens, in tribute to tragic policeman PC David Rathband.

Ending the night singing a monks’ prayer, Before We End Our Day, as a lullaby, O’Connor’s show had been spiritual, yet earthy too.