Lord Huron @ O2 ABC, Glasgow, 27 Jan

As Celtic Connections begins its second week, Glasgow's O2 ABC is packed and ready for American indie-folk band Lord Huron. It’s a big step up from their previous trip to Glasgow but from the moment Ben Schneider and his bandmates hit the stage it’s clear that this is a band determined to be huge.

First however, we’re treated to a pair of acts whose ambitions seem modest by contrast but whose grasp of melody is just as strong. Beatles-esque four-piece Flyte from London – named after Sebastian Flyte, the charming rich boy from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited – take the stage first. The band have a neat knack for mimicking the complex undercurrents that swirl beneath Waugh’s novel, whether that be the surprisingly dark lyrics of Orphans of the Storm, or the subtly shifting chord sequences that underpin the brilliant Spiral.

Not every idea works. An acapella cover of Alvvays’ effervescent Archie, Marry Me is a nice idea but lacks the sheen of the original and you’re left no wiser as to why Flyte chose this tune in particular to reinterpret, but there’s enough good ones to make the young group an interesting prospect. This is especially true when their impressive arrangements are allowed to sparkle as on Cathy Come Home, a lilting pop song with a touch of Last Christmas to the verse melody, that culminates in a cute sugar rush of ascending vocal harmonies.

Next up is The Weather Station, a Canadian folk music band fronted by Tamara Lindeman, whose straightforward strummed and plucked songs take on a more exciting live guise with the aid of some subtle flourishes from her tight backing band. Kept it All to Myself sounds like a Joni Mitchell track with Mark Knopfler on lead guitar, while the lyrical Thirty has a touch of Fleetwood Mac to its evocative musings on aging. Though Lindeman professes to be suffering from laryngitis she soldiers on regardless, showing off a husky voice that works well with her dust-stained songcraft.

"Last time we were here," Lord Huron’s Ben Schneider reminisces, "it was at tiny King Tut's." This time it’s a far bigger audience for the Americans but they seem set to take it all in their stride. The 'celtic connection' may be a little tenuous for this show – there’s touches of trad music in their DNA somewhere, filtered through the same lens as American indie darlings like Grizzly Bear and Band of Horses – but expanded to a six-piece live, they treat this Scottish show like a homecoming, encouraging the crowd to clap along and lending a swagger to even their folksiest material.

On the cusp of releasing their third record, everything about Lord Huron’s performance screams that this is a band on the verge of enormous things. From the retina-scorching stage lighting to Schneider’s energetic stage performance, you can sense that playing on the biggest of stages is something that Lord Huron are striving for. Dressed in a white shirt and black jacket, there’s a dandyish, man-about-town aura to Schneider at odds with his homilies about writing songs for singing round campfires, that even brings to mind The Killers’ attention-seeking frontman Brandon Flowers.

Fortunately, the songs from their new record seem to have been appropriately burnished, with as many as four guitars playing as the band bring Schneider’s songs to epic crescendos. One new track sees him lay down his acoustic guitar and take his place unencumbered at the microphone, while The Night We Met spirals from intimate and charming to glorious and skyscraping, and Fool For Love has been polished until it resembles a pocket Springsteen symphony. These are not always complex sentiments but for an evening Lord Huron manage to make them sound unbeatable.