Wild Beasts @ Albert Hall, Manchester, 26 March

Anyone would think it were a homecoming, as almost 2000 people join the swell of Lion’s Share: “Boy, what you running from?”, they implore, the opener of 2011’s Smother having evidently become a classic at only three years’ vintage. Sure, Wild Beasts haven’t played in Manchester for as many years – but this, this is like the closing set of a festival at summer’s end.

It would be naive not to acknowledge the venue’s role in this atmosphere, however – the deep, stepped balcony of the Albert Hall allowing ampitheatre-like views, the vast, shallow dome of the roof providing a wide canvas for the band’s quixotic laser show, emeralds and cyans playing out like supernovae on an observatory ceiling. Indeed for the first few songs, while they aren’t dwarfed by it, the band certainly aren’t acclimatised to the space either, and Mecca and Devil’s Crayon struggle with muddy sound. But after ten years playing together, these long-time best friends are formidably tight and intuitive, and by the time Daughters’ suspecting, watchful drums mark out their territory, they’ve risen to the challenge.

Braced against their keys, Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming mirror each other’s stance; but, vocally, they’re their most defined in complementary counterpoint yet. Where Thorpe’s tenor-falsetto can sound vulnerable on record, here it is molten gold, full and honeyed; Fleming’s feathered, huffed gruffness, meanwhile, acquires a razor’s edge. Led by his whorling, blown-glass vowels, the standout tracks from current album Present Tense – Nature Boy and A Dog’s Life – are tonight’s show stealers too, and throughout, there is a feeling of wonder at the idea that these two singular voices should ever have found each other in a school in Kendal in the first place. Long may they prosper.