Low @ The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 25 Apr

Given the unenviable task of opening for a band with as die-hard a fan base as Low are Divide And Dissolve, whose politicised doom steadfastly refuses to be ignored. Stood about two foot apart, eyes locked throughout, guitarist Takiaya Reed and drummer Sylvie Nehill grip, with their beautiful, tectonic maelstrom of surging distortion and battering cymbals.

That said, they are at their best when they let their orchestral appetites bleed in, as on Oblique and We Are Really Worried About You. The latter of which has the kind of swooning but gently troubling melody that wouldn’t be out of place on an early Silver Mt Zion record, before giving way to an absolutely gut-churning mulch of low-end guitar squelch. A very strong performance indeed.

Then Low appear silently, and, without their trademark amiable chat, launch into last year's utterly brilliant HEY WHAT. They play it almost in its entirety and it is, without overstatement, utterly utterly breathtaking. From the opener White Horses – which live exposes its nakedly blues rock underpinnings but glitches and stutters as if being communicated by a fax machine – to the rolling, flickering swells of Disappearing, with Mimi Parker’s vocals, in particular, shining through the battering fug of bass, it's uniformly brilliant.

Owing to their recent shift into a sound that's more frayed and digital than their previous work, there’s genuine excitement that comes from seeing a band this seasoned and consummate still really battle with their instruments as Alan Sparhawk does on More. He just about maintains control of the wayward edges of his own distortion, while his control over the extended textural outros throughout the record is masterful, forcing his guitar into sounding like an existentially harrowed dial-up modem with superb results.

Particular mention must go to Days Like These, though. On record it’s a truly great song, but live it’s nothing short of miraculous. The a cappella vocals from Sparhawk and Parker are as gorgeously entwined as ever, before falling away to the 12 most brittle, delicate guitar chords you’ve ever heard, the silences between them pulled so taut, that you think the whole song is half a second away from just sighing its way out of existence. But when it returns to full force it is simultaneously obliterating, harrowing and totally uplifting, leaving behind this incredible glow that only comes after real catharsis.

Once finished with the recent album it’s a bit of a flying visit to their previous records, but if there’s one thing Low have got (other than, it turns out, a startling amount of fans that look like Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick), it’s a back catalogue dense with brilliant songs. They can happily cherry-pick from their post-millennium work and every song is beloved by at least a significant portion of the room, while the rest just think it’s very very good.

New bassist Liz Draper carries the sinister barroom chug of No Comprende, imbuing the whole thing with this perfect glowering menace, while Parker’s live drums unearth What Part of Me as the kind of perfect breezy pop that, were it recorded 45 years ago, Peter Jackson would be in the process of making a 15-hour documentary about it. 

It’s a glorious display from a band with a back catalogue of brilliance and, if their spectacular present is anything to go by, even more to come.