Mogwai

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Something to admire about Mogwai: the self-effacing yet assured façade they present to an eager crowd. Five nice, respectable lads from Glasgow (tonight augmented by occasional sixth member, African-Orcadian multi-instrumentalist Luke Sutherland) appear onstage with little preamble, as the beats from the DJ's Digital Hardcore collection are still echoing weakly in the ceiling. They pluck out the tentative opening to White Noise (which kicks off their newest album Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will), and a series of thuds from Martin Bulloch's kick-drum launch us into space. Hardcore's gloomily menacing title fits in with one of Mogwai's recurrent motifs. They love nothing better than dressing their otherwise opaque instrumentals in the borrowed clothes of West of Scotland gang culture (Come On Die Young, Mogwai Young Team), perhaps because they know that the idea of the gang is central to a band's identity: a united front against the barbs and brickbats of the world.

What that title disguises, however, is the fact that this album is, overall, one of their most upbeat and straightforward in a while. White Noise is a jaunty, propulsive thing, which has the impressively skinny Stuart Braithwaite bouncing like a ball-bearing while Sutherland holds his violin low into his body, spinning round like a guitar hero. As if to point up the contrast in mood between Hardcore and their last album, the glowering, downbeat The Hawk Is Howling they play THAT album's opener, the stately, piano-led I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead. This number has been known to make hardened men in lumberjack shirts cry, and as it builds to its mountainous crescendo, hands can be seen wiping at faces, and grasping for empty air all over the front row, Braithwaite twitching and slashing at his guitar, Barry Burns delicately picking out the piano melody.

They dive straight back into new-album volume and savagery with San Pedro, the front row now nodding intensely with a determined set to its jaw, before pulling us back into waltz-time with a quietly impassioned Friend Of The Night. How To Be a Werewolf is framed by projections of tourist-video Scotland, as seen by a cyclist with an impressive ginger beard: somewhat apt since the track sounds like a funky, post-rock take on The Bonnie Bonnie Banks Of Loch Lomond (it does; listen to it). Braithwaite dedicates the track to the film's maker, photographer Antony Crook whose hazy cityscapes adorn Hardcore's sleeve.

2 Rights Make 1 Wrong stultifies a little with its length tonight, and Death Rays feels like a pleasant amble through familiar, but unexciting landscapes. They pull some drama back with the relentless, spidery Rano Pano (a highlight of the new album), here sounding slower, grimier, more sluggish and threatening, than it does in its recorded form. At times the rhythm seems on the verge of splintering into five separate speeds, but they just keep it together: whether this is an aspect of the song's difficulty or newness, or a contrivance to keep the crowd on the edge of its seat, it works: the applause sounds like something a sports crowd reserve for a gruelling victory.

Whenever the acoustic intro to Xmas Steps is heard live, it's always a heart-stopping moment: not only because it's one of Mogwai's flagship songs, but because the majority of it takes place in near-silence. Very few live crowds pass the test, and dismayingly tonight's rendition is pock-marked with ignorant bar chatter and the nervous giggles of those who aren't here to listen. When Dominic Aitchison's thunderous bassline kicks back in, commanding you to respect its authoro-tah, it always sounds like "Shut UP! Shut UP! Shut!", and the audience always seem to jump several feet in the air. The crescendo is fierce, and the outro is sad and lovely, Sutherland squeezing every last drop of emotion from his violin, to the bitter end. He stays on board and straps on a guitar for You're Lionel Ritchie, another long, serpentine jam backlit by the moody time-lapse cityscapes from the album cover.

New Paths To Helicon would seem to be the perfect capper to the evening, a lump-in-the-throat slow-burner which should rightfully be the new Scottish national anthem, but they push the new stuff once more with the motorik forward motion of Mexican Grand Prix, Sutherland sighing and snarling into the mic. As it degenerates into a formless mesh of feedback and looping synth the band depart the stage one at a time. John Cummings peers at a near-empty wine bottle before taking it with him to the wings.

The encore comes around fast. Braithwaite's malfunctioning-robot microphone chatter clues us in that the next number will be the fabulously-titled, fabulously upbeat George Square Thatcher Death Party (a title that, like Scotland's Shame from The Hawk Is Howling, encapsulates something very specific about the mindset of  Strathclyde). They resurrect another old favourite, the peaks and valleys of Mogwai Fear Satan giving the crowd plenty of opportunity to clap the loud bits like they're applauding a series of jazz solos. Again it is striking how many tunes in the band's arsenal sound ultimate, final, can't-top-that majestic.

But of course there is one Mogwai number that really does pound that final nail into the skull: the plunging, pummelling metallic mess of Batcat. Five minutes of screeching, raging panic and bone-breaking bass that grips you by the throat and doesn't let go until the whole thing collapses in a wall of noise that sounds like a ten-tonne truck going over a sheer precipice and hitting every rock on the way down. Now they won't top that, thinks the crowd. And sensibly, they don't try, instead goofing around in front of Braithwaite's camera as he takes a cheeky shot of the crowd. They don't look like men who've just driven a truck off a cliff. But the audience's ringing ears testify to the truth. They're monsters, those lads. Shy, self-effacing monsters with goofy smiles.