Luna @ Manchester Gorilla, 3 August

"You all been across the road to The Ritz to check out Bad Religion? No? Not one of you?" Dean Wareham offers a rueful shake of the head. There was a time, you suspect, when both he and his faithful (here tonight in both number and boisterous good humour) would have shrivelled to dust if they'd dared even enter the same postcode as the punk veterans, but the return of the indie pop big cheese at the helm of perhaps his most celebrated outfit (Galaxie 500 notwithstanding) is cause for breaking out the earplugs rather than the daffodils. Luna? Twee? Sorry, mate – can’t hear ya.

The spidery Velvets guitar lines and shuffling beats that colour their recorded output make way onstage for volume and clout: guitarist Sean Eden, drummer Lee Wall and Britta Phillips (bassist and Wareham's wife and long-term co-composer) pack a hefty wallop. As they tease diamonds from the back catalogue (Malibu Love Nest, Pup Tent, an heroic 23 Minutes in Brussels), their free-wheeling bonhomie allows for a couple of off-script detours as requests pour in. "Yeah, we could probably manage that," laughs Wareham as Eden gives him serious eyebrows. Wareham shrugs; the band doesn’t falter. Eden takes the lead on a glorious Still At Home. They blaze through Friendly Advice. The second half is frenzied but the atmosphere is charged from the off. 

A closing Sweet Child O' Mine is played (correctly) straight: slowed down and reduced to burning devotional, it's a sharp companion piece to their other established cover, a gutsy reading of Beat Happening's Indian Summer. Following that 'farewell' tour a decade ago, what a joy to have them back fighting fit. 'Luna reunion' might be a bugger to get your tongue around but this is one comeback that's oh so easy to swallow.