It's actually quite early, half empty, and therefore bloody freezing when ANTHONY ATKINSON takes the stage. Having taken a month off from his band The Mabels to go galivanting around Europe with fellow countrymen The Lucksmiths, Atkinson could be forgiven for being the most hedonistic party animal in Nottingham.
Forgiveness isn't necessary however, as the presence of Atkinson and his acoustic guitar knocking out diatribes about his girlfriend leaving him, the sun turning to rain and meeting the wrong girl in the wrong place at the wrong time sound distinctly eerie and remind me of the first time I saw Elliott Smith support Belle and Sebastian five years ago - i.e. a heartbreaker for hardened souls, which is basically a cardiographer's nightmare.
Next up come the familiar tones of THE LIBERTY SHIP and AIRPORT GIRL, both local heroes in the way they proudly carry the flickering torch of C86 indie-pop into the 21st Century, although occasionally both do have a tendency to p-l-o-d a little too wearily at times.
The former perk up at the end with a sprightly blast through 'Yuri Gagarin' while the latter seem to get off to the perfect start with the winsome 'Do You Dream In Colour' only to tail off in the middle stages, and it takes rousing renditions of 'From Delta To Delaware' and 'The Foolishness We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Get To Greatness' to bring both band and audience back to life again.
Not that THE LUCKSMITHS need any such prompting, or indeed gentle nudge-nudge, wink-wink style reminders that this is a live show and therefore it is your duty to entertain us. In fact I couldn't envisage messrs Donald, White, Monnone and (honorary recruit for the duration of this tour) Cramer doing anything else.
Two years I've waited to see this band, and after 30 seconds of the opening bars of 'Camera Shy' I'm in heaven, the prolonged exile finally put to sleep. Sure, some people may dismiss The Lucksmiths or other bands of their ilk as being "twee", but hey, it didn't do Belle and Sebastian any harm, or The Smiths, or Orange Juice, or The Primitives, or countless others who've been able to make a tune sound like it was written specifically with a certain set of words in mind.
And boy, do these guys have a plethora of tunes. From the monolithic 'Successlessness' to the sparkling jangle of 'The Golden Age Of Aviation' through to the celebratory 'Midweek Midmorning', The Lucksmiths provide the missing link between Morrissey and Marr's severed alliance and Murdoch and David's more amicable but just as painful (to us fans anyway) parting of ways.
When Tali Kelly sings "One day we'll be poor no more" you feel that some evangelical prophecy has decided his band's fate, rather than being just another hopeful epitaph of what might have been.
