The Posies @ Night & Day, Manchester, 27 Oct

Time is cruel. For some reason, people who make beautiful music do not get to stay young forever. This does not seem right. What’s more, bad things can happen to those people, just as bad things can happen to you and me. This last year, The Posies have lost two members: drummer Darius Minwalla and bass guitarist Joe Skyward. They talk about it, roughly mid-set, how hard it’s been, how they’ve vowed to continue as a three-piece, with new drummer Frankie Siragusa. They wear all this shit on their faces.

And yet, even in the midst of all this horror, founding members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow find themselves touring what might well be the best Posies album, Solid States. If all you know of The Posies is that once upon a time they released an awesome record called Frosting on the Beater, or that they toured as part of a reformed Big Star or that they helped out with REM in their last days, know that there is an album that was released this year that is at least as good as every other guitar rock album released this year (but quite possibly a lot better).

Solid States forms the backbone of the set: they play almost all of it, vocals switching between Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. These songs are massive. Time and again – as they sing the chorus to Titanic ('Raising / The Titanic / Of your heart'), as they scream 'I long for completion' during the wall of sound at the climax of The Sound of Clouds, during the bittersweet "Hey, where we gonna go now / It’s like a game we’re playing / Not knowing how" refrain of Unlikely Places – you think: here is a band that should be massive. Here are songs that should be deadened by the frequency with which you hear them in stores, on the radio, everywhere you go. And the fact is: song after song after song is a triumph: yes, we get Dream All Day and Solar Sister, but we also get Scattered and March Climes and M Doll and Squirrel Vs Snake, new songs that stand shoulder to shoulder with their best.

For their sake, for your sake, check out the album and catch them next time around. Together we can make them the biggest band in the world and everything that is currently wrong will be made well.