Minor Victories @ The Art School, Glasgow, 6 May

There’s an argument to be made that this shouldn’t work. A project without location, material recorded remotely, its protagonists first together only when rehearsing for the tour. The album’s not out for a couple of weeks, punters yet to strike up a relationship with the music, and while the figures on stage are far from unfamiliar, the context is new; it could all have fallen a little flat.

So thank fuck for the sheer sonic topography of Minor Victories; from the enveloping sturm of opener Give Up the Ghost onwards, the sense of awe is close to corporeal. Swelled to a six-piece with keyboards and Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch supplementing bass, guitars and vox, it’s sound as undercurrent, as texture, as grace (especially the grace).

Of course, the band absolutely know what they’re doing – you don’t get to be a mainstay of Editors or Slowdive or Mogwai if you’re a musical passenger – but tonight’s set travels way beyond side project protocols.

It’s in the strength of the material. Of songcraft, and light.

It’s in the guitars; the way in which Justin Lockey and Stuart Braithwaite apply contrasting styles to pull verisimilitude forward – Braithwaite all high fretwork on Breaking My Light while Lockey handles the momentum, Cogs seeing Stuart drive melody as Justin plays as if it’s a trebuchet and not a guitar he’s wielding.

And it’s in Rachel Goswell, her vocals enigmatic, alluring, tugging at the heartstrings of quite a few fanboys (and fangirls, too). Like an indie-pop Mona Lisa she has a way of performing that makes it appear she’s looking directly at you; in a far smaller venue than you’d ever get to see Slowdive, it’s particularly swoon-inducing. By the time The Twilight Sad’s James Graham arrives to duet on Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard) – “I’m a competition winner,” he quips – we too feel something similar just to be present; only nine songs, but each of them quite, quite special. They finish with Out to Sea, the end of which sees a single string remaining on Braithwaite’s guitar – it’s been that sort of night. An absolute triumph.