The intimate acoustic show can denote many things for an established artist. One is that, in the infamous euphemism coined by Spinal Tap, their audience has become more ‘selective’. Attempting to make the best of a bad job, the artist shifts down a gear while aiming upmarket, much in the manner of a balding man cultivating a fancy moustache.

The cosy concert is also favoured by pop stars craving some old fashioned string-and-wire authenticity. Occasionally, the urge is a creative one, propelled by the sense that the material being promoted lends itself to a less triumphalist approach.

The impulse for Mitski’s coolly choreographed hour in Edinburgh seemed to lean towards the latter. The US singer-songwriter is one of those contemporary artists whose success is hard to measure by conventional readings. There have been no hits to speak of, but her knotty, apparently very personal songs are a magnet for cultish fervour online – and, it transpires, in the flesh. The Queen’s Hall bar was serving tumbleweed; although few people in attendance were old enough to buy alcohol, most were drunk on devotion. Mitski’s songs channel all the angst, dread, intimate detail and flashes of dark humour that encourage young people to overidentify. One new song is called ‘I Don’t Like My Mind’. During a pause, a girl called out: ‘You seem a bit sad, Mitski, are you okay?’

I think she’s fine. Wisely, she refused to light the fuse of an audience primed for detonation. Singing in character, she kept us at a studied distance throughout, deliberately breaking focus only towards the end, when we were urged to adopt a cat. The show was no less theatrical for being minimalist. Dressed sombrely in a black dress, ankle socks and sensible shoes, she sang with a slightly severe poise which was quietly mesmeric.

Backed by acoustic guitar and stand-up bass, Mitski performed her new album in sequence, all half-an-hour of it, followed by a handful of older songs. Her seventh album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, is her first top five record in the UK. One track, the soft, breathy, jazz-tinged ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ is, thanks to the ludic powers of TikTok, one of the most played songs on Spotify right now. This commercial cut-through is impressive, because her music doesn’t necessarily seem designed for mass access. The melodies take unexpected turns, suggesting a kinship with everyone from Jimmy Webb to Weyes Blood and Big Thief.

On a bare stage, the emphasis was loaded on to her songs and voice. Both stood up admirably. She sang softly while wielding a big stick. ‘Heaven’ had a Lynchian feel, that sickly sense of a 1950s ballad gone awry. ‘Bug Like an Angel’ and ‘I Love Me After You’ evoked the gloriously narcoticised country-rock of Mazzy Star. ‘The Frost’ was twee and ‘Love Me More’ almost comically bleak, but ‘Star’ was more representative, a beautiful chamber piece that felt like eavesdropping on a muttered conversation. This was a strange, dreamlike and magical show.

You won’t find New Order playing their new album at an intimate venue any time soon. Indeed, at their concert at the cavernous Hydro, it was notable the extent to which they are embracing the entire sweep of their historic legacy. For at least two younger generations, the band are increasingly venerated as a living link with the more mythical Joy Division, the group in which New Order singer Bernard Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris – as well as long-departed bassist Peter Hook – were members up until Ian Curtis took his own life in 1980.

In late middle-age, they are leaning into their distant past. It means Unknown Pleasures T-shirts at the merch stand and a mini Joy Division set as an encore, the highlight of which was a sombre ‘Decades’.

With their guitar riffs and crunchy dynamics, the newer New Order material – ‘Academic’; ‘Be a Rebel’ – shifted them closer to the terrain of a straightforward rock band, which was to nobody’s benefit. Thankfully, the set was dominated by a parade of glistening, future-perfect numbers from the 1980s. A pulsing ‘Vanishing Point’; an exquisitely beautiful ‘Your Silent Face’, as timeless and unimprovable as a classical column; the shuddering ‘Ultraviolence’. ‘Age of Consent’ and ‘Temptation’ were raggedly anthemic yet somehow still pale and vulnerable. These songs and several others begged the question: is playing the oldies an act of nostalgia when the oldies still sound like the future?