THE 15th anniversary of Badly Drawn Boy's first and still best album, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, is triggering a rebirth for Damon Gough, the Bolton singer-songwriter who won the Mercury Music Prize in 2000.

Not only is he to re-issue Bewilderbeast in a deluxe edition this autumn with extra material, but his re-connection with his peak past is prompting a new burst of songwriting after a hiatus since 2012's Being Flynn soundtrack.

Gough has talked in interview of addressing depression too, and although he had a "foul-mouthed rant" at last month's Latitude festival about tight organisers paying him only five grand, he cut an engaged figure, rather than the erratic one of past reputation, on the Leeds City Varieties stage on Thursday. Especially by comparison with his night of rising malcontent at the Scarborough Spa in October 2010, when he seemed his own worst enemy.

Greeted as the returning hero in a city where he once lived, and given encouragement, even jocund advice by the Yorkshire crowd, Gough was in effusive mood, regularly expressing his appreciation of everyone's support for this revitalising tour.

His thanks too went to Matt, his keyboards player, who only a few months ago had given him the impetus to go out on the road and then formed a band around him. A band, said Gough, who quickly had become his friends too.

Ironically, given that Gough split up with his wife Clare three years ago, his decision to revisit Bewilderbeast has reacquainted him with songs that charted how he wooed her. The presence of new players beside the man in the obligatory woolly hat has loosened him up to match the relaxed flow of that gloriously informal record, and if the lovely brass on the opening The Shining was missing from the live version, everything else was in bloom, not least Gough's voice, on a set played in track order.

Once Around The Block, Magic In The Air, with Gough at the keyboards, and Say It Again were the high spots, and Epitaph closed the first half with the birdsong from the record accompanying Gough's singing.

After an interval break, Gough returned and welcomed crowd requests from his back catalogue, playing solo at first, which had him starting and stopping and re-starting songs but humorously so. "It's my request," he said, when launching into one song on a whim.

As the band re-joined him, it was a pleasure to see him this way, buoyed by the presence of his mother, father, a brother, sister and nephew in the Leeds music hall, with everyone else forming one happy family too. Roll on the new material and his headline appearance at the Galtres Parklands Festival at Duncombe Park on August 28.

No less euphoric was Sunday's short but perfectly formed set by Brooklyn indie-guitar band The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. The unnecessary trudge through the sludge of three support acts held them back till after 10pm, but they were quick out of their traps once let loose, showing up their paucity of what had gone before.

Kip Berman writes everything but he was at pains to diffuse the focus, saying how the band was much more than him. In particular, Jessica Weiss, who came aboard for last year's Days Of Abandon album, has added much pizzazz with her keyboards, harmonies and sometime lead-singing too.

Guitars glisten, melodies rush for the horizon, lyrics are full of daydreams, sometimes thwarted by encircling darkness, but there is a lightness to the playing that marks out the likes of Until The Sun Explodes, Kelly and Belong. Covering a Felt song showed impeccable taste in cult British acts too.