When Bruce Springsteen last hit Ireland, he had the gentlemen, cowboys and gangsters who make up The E-Street Band by his side.

They stood around the bandleader, joined him at the microphone for some "sha-na-na" choruses and generally shouldered the load. In the wide open spaces of the RDS, Springsteen's songs roamed and rocked, his cast of characters living large with an eye cocked to the faraway horizon.

But last week, with Springsteen alone and acoustic on the stage of the Point, there's a different buzz in the air. Many artists have tried to turn that God-forsaken train shed in the docklands into an intimate setting, yet few have so easily or willingly drawn their audience so far into the heart of their songs as the man from New Jersey. There are a lot of dreams in the world of Springsteen, but there are also a lot of hard times, and tonight you can sense the claustrophobic, quiet desperation which marks his finest songs.

He's touring Devils & Dust this time out, an album as far removed from The Rising as Asbury Park is from Ashbourne. Quiet, downbeat and introspective, it's shaped from the same wood which produced The Ghost of Tom Joad and Nebraska. It's an album which needs time and attention to work its spells, things which have gone astray in an industry where the best-selling single features a frog from a mobile phone ringtone.

Watching a Springsteen crowd come into the hall before a show begins is always fascinating. The wild and the innocent may not have got out of bed in time to get their tickets on this occasion but, besides the long-term devotees (one chap was seeing The Boss for the 56th time tonight, another for the 61st), there are lots and lots of fresh faces in the room too.

What we're getting from Springsteen is honesty and integrity. Music only tends to do honesty and integrity these days if it comes as part of a marketing campaign. There are few acts left in the big-league game who haven't compromised themselves in one way or another as the commercial fat cats come calling. Springsteen's motives remain untainted and the only hawking he does tonight is for the Amnesty International stall in the foyer.

Other than that, it's the dreamers who make the biggest impression. You can hear them revving their engines in Racing In The Street and looking for reasons to believe in the The Promised Land. At one stage, Springsteen walks over to the piano, introduces a song as one of his "hidden love songs" and plays The River. It has never sounded better. Really, you can never have too many songs about cars and girls when they're this good, this raw, this haunted.

There are new songs too, Springsteen twisting and amplifying nuances from Devils & Dust and Jesus Was An Only Son. He goes through the back catalogue like a man flicking through a pack of cards.

To close this extraordinary, enthralling show, Springsteen leaves Dublin with a Roy Orbison-like song called Dream Baby Dream. Despite all the bad times and the hard-luck stories which usually leave his cast of men and women lost and broken-hearted, there is always room to dream of a better tomorrow in Springsteen's world.