Lanterns On The Lake @ Electric Circus, 30 November

Newcastle duo Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell offer up some sparse yet evocative odes to fickle relationships as tonight’s opening act. From the plaintive call to unrequited love that is Letters to Lenore, to a sanguine tale of a drunken party girl, there’s something here that everyone can empathise with. Jonny even pulls back the curtain on the latter, admitting that the intoxicant in question was in fact Buckfast and not rosé as the song suggests. That’s good poetic license there, folks.

All the while, a strong crowd has gathered for headliners Lanterns on the Lake on the last evening of their current tour. Trendy urbanites in faux-fuddy duddy clothing rub shoulders with genuine middle-agers in more conventionally fashionable threads, providing a nice analogy for the Lanterns sound. Guitars are given the Sigur Rós treatment with the use of double-bass bows, fluttering electronics give way to violins and pattering drums before waves of martial percussion perpetually reach for ever-inventive crescendos. The quieter moments hit home too, with vocalist Hazel Wilde hushing noisy bar-dwellers at forty paces with the elegiac Ships In The Rain. Indeed, the wet stuff itself awaits us outside, but we’ve been warmed enough by a stellar evening.