Los Campesinos! @ Club Academy, Manchester, 29 Oct

Nearly a decade on from their first album, the Manchester branch of the Los Campesinos! supporters club is no longer taking their shows for granted.

After all, this is their first gig in the city in just shy of three years; generally speaking, they seem to prefer Leeds these days when they do venture north. Quite aside from cross-Pennine rivalry, though, the band are no longer the same fresh-faced outfit that emerged from the University of Cardiff in 2006. Real life has caught up with them of late, and it’s something that they’ve never been afraid to discuss, from frontman Gareth David’s consistent allusion to their day jobs on Twitter to his mention tonight of the fact that his sister Kim – the group’s keyboardist – is playing whilst twenty-eight weeks pregnant.

All of which conspires to make an LC! show a bit more of an event these days, as David makes clear through a consistent thread of self-deprecating stage banter that toes the line between tongue-in-cheek and grating. He doesn’t like going to gigs any more, he doesn’t have the same energy that he used to, and he doesn’t expect the group’s terrific sixth LP, February's Sick Scenes, to place any higher than the honourable mentions section when the end-of-year lists roll around.

That record provides some low-key highlights tonight, particularly The Fall of Home and 5 Flucloxacillin; the former is a delicate ode to the unbridgeable divide between the town you grew up in and where you've ended up once you’re past a certain age, and the latter takes aim at the dismissive attitude of baby boomers. Those assembled, though, are here for the big hitters, which range from pop stompers – By Your Hand, the Joseph-Désiré Job-referencing What Death Leaves Behind – to the stormy, Tory-bashing The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future.

This is the final Los Campesinos! show of the year and you wonder what’s next for them; this set leaned towards nostalgia in a way that inevitably raises the issue of next year’s tin anniversary for both Hold on Now, Youngster... and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. Amongst that, the vitality of their newer work was lost a touch; more confidence in it going forwards would serve them well, even if they don’t get to play anywhere near as often as they’d like to nowadays.