Manchester Orchestra @ The Garage, Glasgow, 22 Oct

The rise of Manchester Orchestra – neither mancunian nor notably orchestral, instead a vehicle for the songwriting of Atlanta, Georgia’s Andy Hull – is a curious one. Over five records they’ve moved between chest beating emo anthems and more streamlined American rock, channelling both the Pixies quiet-loud dynamics and Smashing Pumpkins’ classic rock riff power. Like fellow southerners My Morning Jacket or Band of Horses they manage to make music that is both bombastic and personal, and nowhere is that more obvious than on their latest record, A Black Mile to the Surface.

Three tracks from the new record open the show, with the group winding through the rootsy rock of The Maze and The Gold and The Moth’s icy sweep but it’s the angsty emo of Shake it Out and the fist-pumping Pensacola that really kick the show into gear, as Hull snatches at the microphone and leaps across the stage to eyeball headbanging bassist Andy Prince.

Hull has always been keen to let others know what is going on inside his head but he’s curiously quiet tonight, taking more than a dozen songs to even acknowledge the audience, and then only to offer a shout out to local heroes Biffy Clyro. He can let his music do the talking though, because live his confessionals are blown 40 feet into the air and there’s a sense that this is a band who revel in the grandiose scale.

The Garage stage quakes at the noise unleashed by the quartet and if a little of the detail is lost amid the whirling and whistling wall of noise, it’s a worthwhile trade-off for a set that is certainly not short on raw rock power. The penultimate track of the main set Cope is the heaviest yet, drawing on a mutant classic rock riff which, let’s face it, is basically Black Sabbath’s Iron Man given a 21st century polish. It’s a quiet-loud explosion that perfectly syncs the singer’s sweeping drawl to his band’s punchy, emotive music.

Returning for a quick encore, I Can Feel a Hot One is Hull at his most soul-bearing but it’s set closer The Silence which delivers the stand out moment; a bulldozer of a track pitched unabashedly at the sweet spot where post-punk gives way to stadium rock. How Hull would feel about being compared to Simple Minds is at the very least up for debate, but as the band heave into motion all the elements align and they unleash a track that’s part cavernous chorus, part rumbling bass, building to an almost a capella coda. This is an orchestra that know how to deliver a crescendo.