Fleet Foxes @ Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, 7 Aug

On paper, the Summer Nights at The Bandstand programme is something of a muddle, the outdoor Kelvingrove stage hosting an incoherent mix of the old and new rather than a carefully curated run of shows. With 12 shows across two weeks, the 2018 series delivers everyone from Brian Ferry and Van Morrison to First Aid Kit and The Fratellis.

Music has always had the ability to fade such peripheral details, however, and finding yourself under salmon sunset clouds, in this most special of venues, with Fleet Foxes’ sumptuous harmonies disappearing into the night sky, the flourishing foliage of the adjoining park as the night’s backdrop, it’s safe to say that there’s very little else like it, in Scotland at least.

The final headline show of their Crack-Up world tour, its name borrowed from their third full-length record, released in 2017, is both exultant and celebratory. As expected, the band are beautifully well-oiled, every sonic excursion balancing a gleaming sense of ambition with the idea that they know exactly where they’re taking it. While the daytime-radio big-hitters stir the biggest reaction from the crowd, Fleet Foxes have always been more interesting in their most nuanced of adventures, and so it proves to be tonight, the breeziness of those early lullabies – White Winter Hymnal, Ragged Wood – sounding, for all of their ingrained splendour, somewhat plain compared to their rightfully-lauded newer material that makes a far mightier impression.

In buoyant mood from the start, centre-Fox Robin Pecknold is undoubtedly the focal point of the whole show, his studied charm forging a strong connection even before that most honeyed of voices, flawlessly surrounded by stunning harmonic complements, lifts everyone in attendance up and away with it; a sumptuous, gentle fog drifting into the ether.

A hidden star at the back of it all, an anchor to the band’s vivacious, vibrant showing, Morgan Henderson plays all manner of instruments, duly flipping between flute, keys, maracas, double bass, saxophone, and probably anything else you can name, epitomising the swelling craft that the band have fine-tuned over the years. Crack-Up’s epic opener I Am All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar is an electrifying curtain-raiser, On Another Ocean (January / June) is a full-bodied, warm-blooded invigoration, while the spiralling The Shrine / An Argument, from 2011’s Helplessness Blues, is the awe-inspiring highlight, crowned by a free-jazz, strobe-lit explosion of brilliance amid the enveloping nightly darkness.

A wholesome showing of two sides to the band, the evening is split between towering ambition and, eventually, something decidedly more humane and ramshackle; frontman Robin Pecknold revelling in the end-of-tour celebratory mood by cherry-placing an impromptu solo excursion for half an hour of requests and rarities, which upsets the rhythm a little but offers something of a glimpse behind the curtain as well as a handful of breathtaking moments – from covers of Joanna Newsom and Joan Baez, to a striking Oliver James – the kind of which can elevate an already special evening into something uniquely memorable. And make no mistake, this is one such event; a crowning achievement, creaks, cracks and all.