Despite Roddy Woomble commenting on how comfortable everyone looked sitting in the venue’s neat rows of seats, it took less than the length of set opener, ‘Paint Nothing’, for a few hundred restless feet to race towards the edge of the stage.
Playing a pretty even spread of hits from their five albums, the crowd bounced around as if every track was a number one smash. Download only single ‘Ghost In The Arcade’ spurred a surprisingly gigantic sing-along, leaving the reaction to ‘Little Discourage’ oddly muted in comparison.
Guitarist Rod Jones galloped up and down from the stage monitors like an excitable pony for most of the set, venturing behind the piano briefly for awesome set closer ‘El Capitan’.
The band hadn’t even left the stage when chants of “one more tune” started up, and they gave Dunfermline four.
Calming the pace for a couple of songs, Roddy revealed that they had planned a more acoustic set, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way.
Drummer Colin Newton abandoned his sticks for a stint on piano – but the alternative version of ‘American English’ lacked the original’s magic touch. One disappointment out of twenty-one songs, though, isn’t bad odds at all.