Dinosaur Jr / Built to Spill @ O2 ABC, 13 May

As double-headers go, seeing slacker rock brethren Built to Spill and Dinosaur Jr share a bill feels well-matched like a Hansel vs Zoolander walk-off. Tonight teenagers mix with twenty, thirty and forty-somethings – with members of Franz Ferdinand and Mogwai scattered in the ranks – for an appointment with the men who had a hand in sound tracking their young adult lives.

With a soulful, spine-tingling voice recalling Ben Bridwell’s (or should that be the other way around?) and looking more like an unkempt Bob Mould with each passing year, the indie rock credentials of Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch don't stop at the superficial. Battling through muddy sound, he leads his Idaho troupe through an hour-long set that plunders career-spanning material from most of its seven albums. So it’s a testament to the strength of their post-millennial material that the glorious slow burn of Goin’ Against Your Mind from 2006’s You in Reverse finds the most fervent crowd response.

As the subject of what always felt like the unfinished chapter in Michael Azerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, it’s heartening to see Dinosaur Jr still firing on all cylinders five years into their rebirth, even lifting the non-Barlow era embargo to indulge in material from all points in their career. Filling in for an ailing Murph, J Mascis’ Fog associate and Harvey Milk drummer Kyle Spence ably mans the skins while anthems for the plain bored ooze from a tower of Marshall stacks.

Feel the Pain, perhaps still their closest moment to a 'pop hit', gets a rare airing alongside raucous jam Freak Scene - the mean between the two being Over It from last year's Farm. Concentrating most on squeezing out solos as his hair floats in the smoke, a druid-like and typically distant Mascis' croaks a solitary "thanks a lot" before leaving us to chew on their feedback drenched equivalent to My Bloody Valentine's show-closing holocaust. So they don't say much, but Dinosaur Jr still speak louder than most. [Dave Kerr]