TORONTO - It's been a while since one of pop music's more distinct voices graced Toronto, but British performer Joe Jackson made up for lost time with an eclectic show Tuesday night at The Music Hall.

Then again, eclectic comes quite naturally to him.

Jackson, touring behind his latest album Rain and kicking off his North American tour here, has always followed his muse, whether into ambitious but less commercially successful projects like Symphony No. 1 or Heaven & Hell. The sold-out crowd was given what they wanted, namely a bevy of melodic jazz-pop numbers and melancholic lullabies dominated by Jackson's pipes and his proficient tickling and pounding of the ivories for 100 minutes.

Noticeably limping to the piano (the result of a badly sprained ankle suffered last week), Jackson began "suffering for his art" with Home Town before bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton arrived for a finely reworked version of Steppin' Out, one of Jackson's signatures more recently found on the live album Afterlife.

Staying seated for most of the night and working rather quickly, the 53-year-old singer began showing more of his adventurous side with the playful, groovy Another World that, like most of his body of pop work, falls somewhere between jazz and adult contemporary pop with intricate arrangements and structures.

Stating that he hadn't been in "balmy Toronto" for a while, and later jokingly describing how his Monday afternoon stroll in the city left him recovering from hypothermia, Jackson went headlong into the new songs such as the punchy, up-tempo Citizen Sane which had Maby marching on the spot and Wasted Time, the latter getting a well-earned reaction.

One thing Jackson didn't do was snub his nose at Toronto's smoking by-laws by lighting up, this despite the fact he's been a very vocal opponent of the smoking bans in Britain and the U.S. The cigarettes have taken a slight toll on Jackson's voice though, as he fought to grasp some notes that years ago would have come much easier. A rasp could also be heard occasionally on other numbers.

Nonetheless, Jackson forged on with more interesting and unique attempts such as the quirky but appealing On Your Radio from 1979's I'm The Man album which garnered a "bloody brilliant" from one ecstatic fan. Jackson's genre range also was evident in a span of a few numbers, moving from the Fats Domino-ish boogie woogie piano playing during Dirty Martini to a far more highbrow, somewhat classical style during Solo (So Low).

If there was a low point, it might have been the one-two punch of The Uptown Train and Chinatown, both of which sagged at times. Fortunately this was rectified when Jackson, flipping through his lyric songbook at the top of his piano, opted to tackle a song from "one of his musical heroes" and nailed David Bowie's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) with urgency and verve.

Although playing a lot of material from Rain, Jackson also allowed for a healthy dose from 1982's Night And Day, including Cancer and the tender '50s era slow song called A Slow Song which capped off the evening. Just as captivating was One More Time fuelled by Maby's frenetic bass line and the surefire warhorse Is She Really Going Out With Him? which created the lone sing-along of the night.