Richmond Fontaine @ Deaf Institute, 17 Oct

"I've always thought of Richmond Fontaine as an old van," Willy Vlautin told The Oregonian earlier this year, explaining why the band were calling it a day. "I want to us to pull over at some dark lounge, not have the engine blow up 'cause we're trying to climb some hill."

It’s another grim-looking evening in Manchester and the Deaf Institute is largely full of men, drawing together to nurse their collective hurts in the company of that great bard of collective hurts – what Vlautin himself calls his “depressing-ass songs” during the course of the night. Here we say goodbye to a band long thought of as the heirs to Uncle Tupelo, but whose career trajectory has perhaps most closely mirrored that of American Music Club (with critical acclaim long suggesting a band on the cusp of crossing over into the mainstream… only for that not to happen).

Although we get nothing pre-2002’s Winnemucca (Winner’s Casino is aired, along with both Northline and Western Skyline), the band hopscotch across the seven albums they’ve made since then. Indeed, tonight's set shows off all aspects of their character: from the unlikely pop-country of Post to Wire and Don’t Skip Out on Me, through rockier fare (that suggests comparisons with no-one quite so much as the Drive-By Truckers) like Montgomery Park. Then there are the sparser works that allow the novelist in Vlautin to come to the fore; both A Night in the City, from this year’s You Can’t Go Back if There’s Nothing to Go Back to, and the rarely-played Exit 194b are stand-outs.

Of course, as is the way of these things, it’s not quite the end. Vlautin, drummer Sean Oldham and bassist Freddy Trujillo make up three-sevenths of Vlautin’s newest band, The Delines, so it’s only really guitarist Dan Eccles (called "St Dan" by Vlautin and responsible for the majority of the fireworks on the night) who's bidding adieu to poorly paid rock’n’roll shows. But we tell ourselves it’s not a time to be sad. It’s a time to celebrate. Here was a great band. You probably missed them, in all their ramshackle glory.