Jonathan Meiburg must like Brighton. It seems his band is constantly performing here to an ever-loyal local crowd. This searing set represented a return to form and maybe their greatest show in the city to date.

Supporting, the Bella Union-signed Londoners My Sad Captains were always going to come across as somehow lacking. An audience member was overheard describing them as “beautifully generic” and sadly this was mostly true. Low-key melancholy indie rock with hints of Jeff Buckley soul was delivered in an intricate, pleasant, though uncharismatic style. This was unfortunately only lifted into the realm of “engaging” by a late injection of synth-pop catchiness.

Shearwater couldn’t have been more different. The delicate instrumentation of earlier albums Rooks and The Golden Archipelago’s quiet apocalypse danced with the more rocking style of 2012’s Animal Joy and last year’s covers record Fellow Travellers, to devastating effect.

Singer Meiburg’s voice remains an at-times incredible instrument, soaring here from the falsetto intimacy of Hidden Lakes and peaking with the proggy stomp of Insolence, a genuinely spine-tingling moment of calamitous brilliance.

An extremely welcome encore came in the form of the equally stunning The Snow Leopard, the cathartic death throes of which rounded off a memorable evening perfectly.