Beach House @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 23 May

Beach House can be a bit of a tough sell live: their music is consistently woozy and full of similar textures. On record, the vocals are mixed perfectly to be audible (moreso on later records) while still having a whispery quality – that's hard to recreate in a live setting. There's a heavy reliance on nebulous concepts like atmosphere and mood. These can be helped along by a band, but external factors like the venue or the crowd play a big role in the success or failure of this type of show.

Fortunately, a balmy Monday night at the Barras proves a solid footing, despite a bit of chatter early on and the occasional shirtless lager-boy (not sure when they started getting into Beach House). Beach House's set is fairly scattered and although it's heaviest on their last two albums, no two songs from the same album are played back-to-back. This helps to keep the crowd from falling into a sedate groove, with each new keyboard melody or guitar line eliciting a pulse of recognition from different parts of the audience.

Although older songs like Silver Soul and Lazuli get big reactions early on, the new ones are the most impressive: Only You Know, Once Twice Melody and Superstar are all nailed on to be future live staples. Take Care is the pick of the throwbacks, the first time that Victoria Legrand really lets loose with her vocals during the crescendoing chorus.

Image: Beach House @ Barrowlands, 23 May by Marilena Vlachopoulou

The visuals and lights are fabulously curated throughout, with swirling Escher-like black lodges, creepy giant eyeballs and sweeping vistas all managing to somehow encapsulate the mood. The lights are wide and striking, frequently bathing the stage in profiled shadow, spotlighting and putting the ballroom disco balls to good use.

Lemon Glow is the most abrasive offering, its serrated guitar tone adding a rare bit of edge to this polished performance, but Myth's soothing keys provide a gorgeous close to the main set. A one song encore of Over and Over, a song only three months old, is a strange choice when you've got tracks like Zebra and Norway in the back catalogue, but Beach House's strength has long lain in an ability to keep pushing forward, refining their sound and show rather than reinventing the wheel.