The first act tonight is local singer/songwriter Adam Barnes, who also plays acoustic guitar and is accompanied by a keyboard player. His voice is excellent – soft, but loud enough to fill the large room downstairs at the O2 Academy. His lyrics are pleasant and well-written, and he has a fantastic sense of melody, but as a warm-up act he doesn’t seem as though he’s really getting anyone particularly warmed up; everyone’s just standing still or talking to the person next to them. All of his songs are simple, folk-inspired ballads about the usual topics: love, loss and the like. On the whole, they are slow and somewhat depressing – a far cry from the energetic pop tunes of tonight’s headliners.

Before those headliners, The Crookes, hailing from Sheffield, who have a sound closer to what you might expect from a band supporting Little Comets – cheery, upbeat songs with driving drums and basslines. It gets rather dull, however – the lead singer’s voice is more of a whine, and most of their songs sound remarkably similar. It’s as though they’ve taken just one idea and run with it. They do a good job of warming up the crowd, though, and by the time they leave the stage the audience are ready for the main event.Little Comets take the stage to huge cheers from their ever-loyal rans down the front, launching straight into ‘Tricolour’ from their 2011 debut In Search Of Elusive Little Comets, and lead singer Rob Coles’ high-pitched vocals are unmistakable. They proceed to play a mixture of older material and tracks from their recent album Life Is Elsewhere, making use of their usual percussive instruments hanging from a string stretched across the stage, which include a saucepan (?!). The lyrics go slightly amiss during ‘A Little Opus’, probably due to the complicated guitar parts, but the crowd don’t seem to care – the teens at the front are having a whale of a time, and the older gig-goers at the back are far too focussed on not looking too into it.

The set slows down with ‘Violence Out Tonight’, a poignant tale of violence towards women, and the song receives hearty applause. Another slow one, ‘Bridge Burn’, follows later, morphing into ‘W-O-E’ just before the arrival of an unwanted abundance of misery. There’s not much talking from anyone on stage; it seems they just prefer to get on and play as many songs as they can fit in. After ‘The Western Boy’, featuring fantastic three-way harmonies, and single ‘Jennifer’ – which boasts a rare guitar solo from lead singer Rob – comes set highlight ‘Woman Woman’. The vocals echo around the room and the usual slightly-improvised-sounding, fiddly guitars create a truly superb sound.

After plenty of dancing from the fans at the front during ‘Worry’, ‘Dancing Song’ and ‘Joanna’ comes slow-burner ‘In Blue Music We Trust’, which builds to a slow, climactic close with basic, primitive drumming and a reappearance of the harmonies that the band seem to have adopted since their last gig in Oxford (in October last year).

Then, Little Comets are gone, amongst much applause from the crowd. There’s no encore – the band have said in the past they don’t like to do so – and there’s no need after this long, well-balanced set. It would have been great to have heard some new material, but we’ll forgive them – this hugely talented band still delivered a very energetic, enjoyable set. Long live Little Comets.