Joan Armatrading, Royal Albert Hall, London, ****

Heroic heartache of the queen of divas

Standing tall under four blue spotlights in her stark black suit, white T-shirt and with her Tina Turner mop of black hair, Joan Armatrading radiates heroism. She scrubs a 12-string acoustic guitar like a teenage busker, pulls off blistering electric solos up around the 15th fret like a female Jimmy Page, then takes the microphone in hand for some moody diva crooning like a young Nina Simone. "You can do anything/ You can do anything/ You can prove yourself," she sings, and she does so, over and over. In a crammed Royal Albert Hall on Friday, she showed that at 52 she hasn't changed a scrap from the tough-as-nails romantic whose classic second album, Joan Armatrading, became a fixture in every rock fan's collection in 1976.

Much of the concert was spent plugging her new CD, Lovers Speak, her first studio album for five years. Defensively, she asked the audience if anyone knew its title, and wondered if, in 20 years time, the title track might be requested as much as "Love and Affection" is still yelled for. I don't see why not. Some of the new songs are instantly appealing, especially the bouncy "You Made Your Bed" and the hauntingly beautiful "In These Times", though others ("Love Bug" and "Crazy for You") are a shade too pleased with themselves to stand much repetition.

But who could begrudge Ms Armatrading her apparently blissful current state when it provokes such a torrent of confident musicality? On her new album, she plays all the instruments herself. For the concert she restricted her accompanists to two – Spencer Cousins on keyboards, and Gary Foot on drums, sax and flute. They conjured a startling variety of atmospheres behind her choppy, percussive guitar-playing, Cousins's fluent piano and Foot's energetic bongo drums turning "Let's Talk About Us" into a funky extravaganza and built up the heartbreaking "Everyday Boy" – about her encounter with a young Aids victim – into a sonic cascade.

The audience had come to hear the old stuff, however, and was rewarded with a gorgeously soulful "All the Way from America", "Love and Affection" and a handful of others. Ms Armatrading's voice was always a thing of wonder – so deep and luxuriant, so strong and vital even when expressing loss or yearning, so capricious in the way she pronounces "love" as "loff" – and three decades of use has thickened its texture. Early in the show she wobbled on the high notes – more effortful treble than true soprano – and we held our breath to see if she'd manage the breathy heights of "The Weakness in Me". But she just took a deeper breath and and guided the notes ("But I need to see you... And I need to hold you... tigh-high-ightly") safely home.

The only false notes were struck by a couple of songs that teetered on the bathetic. The yucky platitudes of "Just remember passion fades/ Good friendships seldom die... Though the body needs love/ There is more than one kind" seemed a curious failure of taste in a songwriter of such sophistication. But minutes later she was singing a new love song called "Fool for You" with a gratifying blast of passion, her voice suddenly modulated to a girlish innocence.

When she encored with the gorgeous "Willow" and demanded we joined in the chorus, a thousand nervous middle-class fans in the Kensington barn sang "Shelter in a storm..." in a rapturous whisper, while a brace of spotlights crept across the stalls like a benediction, and Ms Armatrading looked on in delight. At such moments, this St Kitts-born Brummie, a serious musician and an enchanting singer, puts you in mind of a queen.