Mogwai – The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester 27/01/14

The common theme running through most reviews of the new Mogwai record – including my own, for this site – is that its quiet, subdued nature suggests some sort of developing maturity on the part of the band, especially given that they’re closing in on their twentieth year together. The booking policy for this tour certainly seems in line with that particular train of thought; two nights at London’s Southbank Centre over the weekend are followed tonight in similarly all-seated fashion at the Bridgewater Hall, a venue usually reserved for music of the classical persuasion.

Then again, perhaps it’s just that their penchant for the sharp end of the volume dial is beginning to precede them; the soundproofing at the Hall is so effective that the musicians rehearsing there on the day of the IRA bombing in 1996 didn’t hear or feel the blast, a little over half a mile away. Either way, there’s no disputing that a place like this brings a touch of not-unwelcome grandeur to proceedings.

Rave Tapes opener “Heard About You Last Night” brings the proverbial curtain up tonight, and sets the tone for a setlist carefully built around the more restrained textures of the new LP. This particular track is the highlight of an album that aims for this kind of poise throughout; delicate, barely-there piano drifting over a lackadaisical guitar riff.

What follows is a run-through the subtler side of Mogwai; the slowly simmering drama of “Friend of the Night”, “Hunted by a Freak”’s increasingly disconcerting layers of feedback, and The Hawk Is Howling standout “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead” all cases in point. They sit very comfortably alongside the new material – perhaps unsurprisingly, given that they peddle the same sense of unease that underscores the likes of “Deesh”, all stormy guitars and buzzing synths, and “Blues Hour”, on which Stuart Braithwaite delivers a downbeat vocal turn.

There’s little of the straight-up intensity that’s come to characterise the band’s live shows down the years; there’s strobes tonight, but they’re seldom used, with the incendiary second half of deep cut “Ithica 27/9” punctuating an otherwise measured performance. It’s not that there’s no bite – there’s menace in spades on the brooding “Remurdered” – but the three-song encore does a stirring job of evoking the irresistible Mogwai of old, and in the process reminds you that there’s maybe a little something missing where their new, mellower guise is concerned.

“The Lord Is Out of Control” might have been better placed amongst its album-mates in the main set – Barry Burns takes to the vocoder for an unsettling vocal – but the one-two punch that follows is Mogwai in microcosm. “Helicon 1” is proof that they’re old hands at the kind of quietly-building energy that runs through Rave Tapes; it’s a gorgeous mood piece. Juxtaposed against it, quite brilliantly, is the rarely-aired “We’re No Here”; it’s the band at their ferocious best, an exercise in overwhelming loudness.

There’s always going to be a difficult balance to strike when you’re eight records down the line, and the challenge for Mogwai is to find a way for the quiet and contemplative to fit neatly alongside the raucously noisy. Tonight, they lean a little too close to the former, which makes it especially frustrating that they don’t include any material from last year’s delightfully creepy Les Revenants soundtrack. They’re still able, even at their most understated, to deliver an emotional tour-de-force, but their very best shows tend to involve equal parts brutal and beautiful, and the Rave Tapes era looks set to strive solely for the latter.

• Photo from London’s Royal Festival Hall by SARA AMROUSSI-GILISSEN. Full gallery here.