How can you measure a Leonard Cohen gig against a Morrissey, a Kaiser Chiefs, a Gloria Estefan, a David Byrne or even an Eagles concert?

Belfast regularly welcomes great talent and all these musicians have performed here in the last year. But having caught Mr Cohen's last performance in Dublin, just before he hits town at the Odyssey tomorrow, the answer is very clear.

His nearly three-hour performance, including a version of Hallelujah which reclaimed it from the X-Factor upstarts, revenge perhaps for his own version huffing and puffing to a mere 36 in the charts last Christmas, is not just a concert, it's an experience.

Of course Leonard Cohen has been going a while.

A poet and novelist before he became a musician, the Canadian has always had the smarts to last in the music business.

A perpetual outsider who has outlasted more fashionable contemporaries, he was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame in 2008 by no less a personage than Lou Reed.

Songs of Leonard Cohen, his first album released in the late 1960s, proved too dark a palette for the psychedelic era, yet with numbers like Suzanne it set a template for every young man with a guitar and an air of melancholy, from Paul Simon to our very own Snow Patrol.

His music has developed since then, taking in influences from jazz to European folk and classical, and like Lou Reed he has at least one foot planted in Old World decadence with a Brechtian edge.

Wisely, Leonard Cohen has gathered around him a group of musicians sensitive to every nuance of his songs.

Watch out in particular for his doppelganger guitarist (in matching hat) who brings some flamenco and an extremely danceable thrum to the stage.

The audience at the Odyssey can expect the full range of Leonard Cohen's material from modern collaborations with singer Sharon Robinson, a ringer for Michelle Obama with a voice like honey, to classics like the aforementioned Hallelujah and Bird On The Wire.

Vocally, the man is in great shape with a gravelly yet tuneful delivery that suits the spiritual as well as the more earthy numbers like I'm Your Man. This got appreciative gasps from females half the performer’s age.

To say that Leonard Cohen is a sprightly 75 would be an insult. On this current tour the artist formerly known as Capt Mandrax (work it out) has been leaping about the stage with the skill and grace of Roger Federer on a grass court.

He has clearly been rejuvenated not just by the prospect of touring but by the loyalty and variety of his audience, from matronly ladies and their spouses singing along with closed eyes to Sisters of Mercy to youngsters body popping to the 1980s funk of First We Take Manhattan.

It's enough to make an old chap smile and, despite the serious reputation, Cohen has a nice line in self-deprecation once quipping that he had enough “anguish and despair to fuel at least another 10 years of a career”.

The Cohen philosophy, which once sent all of our schoolmates into serious mode and black polo necks, has most definitely mellowed.

Maybe it's the Buddhism that tempted Cohen up the mountain for a few years in the Eighties and Nineties.

There's a haunting line in the live-for-the-moment number Boogie Street that runs “We're so lightly here” and shows the man is a truly talented lyricist.

Note too his sexy repetitions in Suzanne — “She's touched your perfect body with her mind” — which are still sumptuous although written in 1967.

No wonder the critics have been dusting off the plaudits and saying that Cohen's music is still making young women and romantics shiver and sweat.

He isn't afraid of emotion and recites his poem 1,000 Kisses Deep slowly with a light musical backing. This got whoops of appreciation from the capacity crowd, and will do so again tomorrow.

Attending this gig feels as if you're in some European nightclub, just a few of you, with a man who used to epitomise cool and still does.

He wears the hat with pride. And there's an intimacy, somehow, in spite of the capacity crowd, a sense that he's singing just for you.

This concert is a must for aficionados and also for the rest of us who know world-class when we hear it. You'll want to say you were at the 2009 Leonard Cohen tour. Hallelujah.

Tickets for the Leonard Cohen concert on Sunday, July 26 are available from the Odyssey box office and all Ticketmaster outlets. For all credit card bookings: 087 2434455 & 028 9073 9074. Book online at: www.ticketmaster.ie and www.wonderlandpromotions.co.uk