This is the Kit @ Gorilla, Manchester, 17 Sep

It’s a glum autumn Sunday in Manchester, a day of thundering rain. Yet as Kate Stables and her band take to the stage, the skies could be crowded with rainbows. She leads in with Easy on the Thieves from her new album, Moonshine Freeze, castigating herself in the lead-in for bringing the band on for a song they hardly play on. It's only been seconds, and Stables is performing magic on a banjo, singing of “proper Charlies” and “ducking behind trees” and “people wanting blood”. Everyone is smiling, transported, treating This is the Kit like an old friend. 

“We’re mainly going to be playing songs from the new album,” Stables tells us, as the band draw to the close of Spores All Settling from 2015’s Bashed Out, having previously treated us to Sometimes the Sea from 2013’s Wriggle Out the Restless – which just about sums up the jaunty mischief you can expect from This is the Kit. We do get Bullet Proof, though, a song as pretty as The National’s Fireproof, a band they share a kinship with, Aaron Dessner having produced Bashed Out; there's also Hotter Colder, their most overtly Polly Jean Harvey-esque song and the point at which producer John Parish most clearly shows his hand. Set highlights are title track Moonshine Freeze, with Stables and bassist Rozi Plain producing harmonies that would put Fleet Foxes to shame, and All Written Out in Numbers, which sounds like the best, most sun-kissed Vetiver song you can bring to mind.

“I’m so grateful to you all for coming out,” Stables tells us before flicking the Vs over some joke an audience member cracks. “How are you all bearing the heat?” (It’s hotter than a humidor in Gorilla.) “Are you all propped up together like sardines?” Everyone laughs. “Hook, line and sinker,” she sings on Cold and Got Colder. From the looks on everyone’s faces, expressions Stables can surely read, it just about sums up how everyone feels.