Taking to the stage in matching green tracksuit tops, Mogwai look just as likely to be found hanging around in shopping centres as bringing the noise.
Fresh from the release of their latest opus, Mr Beast, the Scottish quintet are in fine form having just started their latest UK tour.
Mixing new material with a host of favourites, Mogwai seemingly hit their stride straight away.
An entirely different prospect on stage, the Glaswegian five-piece are perfectly at home in the live arena, where their slow-building compositions really come alive.
Built around beatific melodies and seismic shifts in volume, Mogwai's modus operandi has always been to create largely wordless lullabies, straddling the divide between funereal swells and eruptions of noise.
Early songs such as Yes! I Am a Long Way From Home and Ithica are met with ripples of acknowledgement.
The breakneck thrust of Glasgow Mega-Snake, taken from their latest full-length, is greeted like an old friend.
There's little interaction between the band and the audience, except Stuart Braithwaite bemoaning his inability to tell
jokes in between songs, and multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns urging a randy couple at the front to "get a room".
Apart from these uncharacteristic displays of communication, Braithwaite and co merely pause to thank the throngs of fans who stand in hushed reverence while letting Mogwai's crashing wall of sound wash over them.
Of the new songs, perhaps the most effective is We're No Here - a bludgeoning cacophony which squalls in all of the right places, it seems custom-built for live performances, especially given the band's recent comments that they had deliberately written some louder songs that would be fun to play on tour.
Fittingly, they end with Mogwai Fear Satan, arguably still their finest moment to date.
I t sees a two-way duel between melody and earsplitting noise, with a triumvirate of straining guitars being barely pulled back from the brink of chaos.
There's only one real victor though - that's Mogwai, and long may it stay that way.
Simon Harper
