Bruce Springsteen's glory days may be behind him, but at 58 he is still forging ahead with a confidence and vigour that few acts of any age or era could muster. His current album, Magic, topped the chart in both Britain and America, and the star from New Jersey has come away with four nominations for the forthcoming Grammy Awards. Arriving in London at the end of a European tour, accompanied by his redoubtable E Street Band, Springsteen powered through his last show of the year with a classic, no-frills approach that still provided plenty of thrills.

The eight men and one woman, were dressed entirely in black and stationed across the full width of the bare, functional stage. Apart from the screens above relaying close-up images of the musicians there was nothing in the way of theatrical effects, let alone costume changes - unless you count the donning of red fur-trimmed hats for a final encore of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. For this was a show without window dressing.

Instead, Springsteen's trick has always been to invest all his thought and energy into the physical presentation of the songs, making "business as usual" seem like an occasion of profound and lasting importance. He didn't just sing numbers like The Promised Land and Lonesome Day, but found a way to inhabit every crevice of their emotional landscapes. Eyes screwed shut, jaw clenched, right arm pumping away on his Telecaster guitar, he seemed to pour himself into the performance with all his strength and soul.

He played a lot of harmonica, conjuring a spectacularly ghostly wail on the bluesy Reason To Believe. And he took a couple of rare guitar solos, jousting with Steven Van Zandt, during the magnificent closing section of Gypsy Biker. The saxophonist Clarence Clemons lent his usual touch of class to the sound and Soozi Tyrell added violin to Lonesome Day and several others. The best solo of the night, however, was supplied by guitarist Nils Lofgren during Because The Night, a spiralling sequence which combined virtuoso ability with a stunning sense of pacing and imagination.

Springsteen prefaced Livin' In The Future and the title track of Magic with brief homilies about the parlous state of American politics. He bemoaned the "roll back" of civil liberties and the twisting of the truth which has become part and parcel of the political process, but didn't make too much of a meal of it. "We're musicians," he pointed out.

Although two and a half hours long, the show proceeded at a tremendous pace, with barely a moment wasted at any point between songs. While new numbers, including the sombre Last To Die and the lighter touch of Girls In Their Summer Clothes delighted, it was the closing run of old favourites, Jungleland, Born To Run and an epic Dancing In The Dark that threatened to lift the venue's already very high roof.

Touring to Old Trafford, Manchester, May 28; Emirates Stadium, London, May 30; Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, June 14

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