Gig review: Joe Bonamassa at First Direct Arena, Leeds

"We had the day in your beautiful city," Joe Bonamassa tells his audience at Leeds's First Direct Arena midway through his show. The guitarist is sweating bullets on stage, mopping his face with a towel and slugging from a bottle of Diet Coke.

"The sun came out for three hours, and then it rained. Then it came out for half-an-hour, and it rained again."

He pauses, then chuckles. "It's nice to be in the Malibu of the UK, huh?"

His words spark laughter, a rare break from the alternative states of pin-drop silence and rapturous applause.

The New York state virtuoso is no stranger to this town, with a live history dating back to the sadly departed Cockpit venue, but it is a first return since 2015.

Nominally here in support of new live record Tales of Time, Bonamassa culls little from it in practice. Instead, across a two-hour-plus wig-out, he leads his band through a blistering set short on staples but high on solos, the peak interpretation of his brand of arena-friendly blues rock.

In the era of the modern pop extravaganza, it's almost archaic to see something so stripped of artifice on a stage this big. Backed by a six-piece outfit, with ex-Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Wynans supplying glorious organ solos, Bonamassa approaches each song as an extended vamp.

Across just over a dozen songs, he stretches each out longer than the last, offering the impression of a club jam session blown out to arena proportions. It is profoundly old-school, and in the hands of a lesser player, would run the risk of overkill.

But Bonamassa's most underappreciated gift is how he picks out the light and shade in his sound. Witness Love Ain't a Love Song's burst of pyrotechnics next to the smokier Self-Inflicted Wounds.

Happier Times stands out as much for its Eighties-soft-rock shuffle as it does for its atmospherics next to the big barroom workout of Lonely Boy, where he produces a Flying V to much delight.

There's no The Ballad of John Henry, or Sloe Gin, but a final pairing of long-time favourites in ZZ Top's Just Got Paid and Mountain Time get the crowd to their feet.

At the end of the former, following a 15-minute blast replete with theremin interlude, Bonamassa offers a salute. He is the skipper of a very accomplished show; old-fashioned, but adamantly sailing its own course against the currents.