Gig review: Wolf Alice at First Direct Bank Arena, Leeds

“I hope we can have a feelgood Friday, Leeds!” Ellie Rowsell bellows from mid-stage, the rest of Wolf Alice locked out after the full-throated bender of Formidable Cool around her. She points to the ceiling of the First Direct Bank Arena and shrieks in glee. “Look at our giant disco ball!”

Few British acts of the past decade have commanded devout critical veneration in the way this London indie four-piece have, with a discography garlanded by Mercury Prize, BRIT Award and Grammy recognition that has burnished their credentials.

Accompanying commercial success has been slower to gestate however; their last two albums may have hit top spot in the charts, but plenty of raised eyebrows greeted the confirmation of this enormo-dome tour back in spring.

Their concerns are duly unfounded. With 10-plus years of teeth cut on successive rungs of the festival ladder, Wolf Alice arrive in West Yorkshire comfortably within their most assured live skin yet, awash in Seventies soft-rock hues, their bark-and-bite musicianship given polished heft and shimmering bombast.

They project the air of a band that has learned the hard way how to work a large audience to their advantage – and now, with a massed congregation of converts both old and new, bring those lessons to bear with splendidly muscular spirit and conviction of faith.

Mostly built upon this year’s sophisti-pop-tinged The Clearing, the results often feel strikingly mature and mannered; buttressed by fluttery spangled curtains hung across a star-shaped tier arrangement, there is a concentrated choreography to the band’s ninety-minute-plus show.

But any sense of rigid formalism is undercut by the retro-invention at play: Bloom Baby Bloom wails behind the echo-laden crash of Joel Amey’s drums like Kate Bush in a storm, while The Sofa recasts Carole King balladry with such wistful smoothness that the whole venue seems to physically sway beneath guitarist Joff Oddie’s arrangements.

Throughout, Rowsell proves eminently suited to the mercurial moods, sashaying from Yuk Foo’s megaphone alt-scuzz to the proggy-psych highs of The Last Man on Earth.

If Silk’s apocalyptic dream-pop is curiously restrained, there’s double joy to be had in the way she and bassist Theo Ellis shake their rumps like a punk-rock chorus line to accompany a lively take on Giant Peach with saucy-postcard cheek.

“I’ve had some good nights out in Leeds,” she says before Don’t Delete the Kisses. She and her bandmates can add this one to the list.