Somewhere inside us all A Certain Trigger sets the nostalgia bells a’ringing and Maximo Park’s debut album chimes right at the heart of all those no-longer-teenagers who fell head over heels for the charismatic indie rockers more than a decade ago.

And if nostalgia is the order of the day, then what better venue to dish up it than in Manchester’s most iconic music haunt the Albert Hall, where on Friday the last of the summer evening sun contorted its way through stained glass windows and the gallery crowds peer down on oncoming performers like a judge waiting to deliver its verdict.

But Paul Smith holds court alongside the best frontmen in the music business, and the iconic voice in the Maximo Park package has lost none of his edgy enthusiasm since the band’s first album was released some 12 years ago.

Smith’s energy brought the Albert Hall to life as the Newcastle-raised four piece stormed through the best of their six albums, including the most recent addition Risk to Exist.

Complemented by some impressive lighting, a packed house and Smith’s ability to have an expectant crowd hang on every lyric, the band’s high intensity work had the Grade II-listed Hall reverberating with every barbed but brilliant note.

Would Smith really do Graffiti if you sung to him in French? He did everything but to treat a venue packed to its gothic rafters with classics such as Going Missing, The National Health and Our Velocity.

Those older anthems were interspersed with some of the best of the band’s new album, which entices and intrigues as Smith and co put the world to rights with a certain poignancy that is summed up by the title track – “now the regimes that we’ve propped up descend into a living hell…”

The boys may have finished with a lung-busting, fist-pumping three-song encore that climaxed with Apply Some Pressure, but on Friday’s evidence their 2017 work has the potential to become some of the most recognisable in their already extensive portfolio.

ALEX BYSOUTH