Mew @ The Ritz, Manchester, 19 May

If anything's to brighten this sticky city night, Mew should manage it. Marking 20 years since they got together at school, the recent release of their sixth LP, + - (Plus Minus), and the return of original bassist Johan Wohlert, the Danish outfit have much to celebrate – and are met with growing cheers as they jog onstage one by one, frontman Jonas Bjerre last. It's the first in a series of slightly gauche but charming rock moves, which take in boots on monitors, guitar-to-guitar face-offs and a mic pointed into the crowd – all somewhat incongruous with their lissom, puzzled prog-pop, but lending the atmosphere an infectious optimism.

Intuitive pairings of songs from  Frengers and And the Glass Handed Kites form the backbone of tonight's set, Witness and Water Slides proving the limber highlights from the new album in between. It's the reworks of tracks from the former, though – Am I Wry? No evolving into 156, Snow Brigade shuddering into Shespider – that truly thrill, and act as a reminder of just what a strange, intoxicating album Frengers, on its release in 2003, really was. Its native sound was a sort of nervy hyper-vigilance that found exuberant release in seething, half-thwarted choruses; and the live treatment of 156 tightens this interplay to vertiginous effect.

Purposefully stalling their way through the verses serves to draw out the sinister beatitude of Bjerre's falsetto (“From my boat / I can see your house / but now the lights are off / and there is no one home”), and means that that final, celestial summons, when it comes – “Don't you just love goodbyes?” – appears cathartic for more than a few members of the audience. The simple but striking production design – spokes of light travel the backdrop like fissuring ice – partners Mew's lack of onstage pretension in making this a gig that's memorable for both band and fans' honest, unshowy glee. [Lauren Strain]