Ten years ago, Mark Morriss and crew would have been playing massive venues and yet here in 2006, they are demoted to the ‘toilet circuit’ that they may have thought they kissed goodbye back in the days of ‘Slight Return’. Yet if you’ve been following their career, you’ll know that there isn’t an ounce of bitterness in the attitude of The Bluetones and this is reflected in the fact that as the years roll by, every album exceeds the one before. Really, they could have come out and played ‘Luxembourg’ track-by-track and nothing else and it would have been a triumph. As it is, Morriss, Devlin and company still roll out the hits with the energy of a band just starting on the road to superstardom.

If we were taking bets on the opening number, chances are ‘Serenity Now’ would not have been on any of our lists, but it shows the confidence the band exudes, an online only EP title track as the first song out the gates? And it’s still fucking brilliant. When it’s followed by the killer double punch of ‘Solomon Bites The Worm’ and ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’, however small the venue may be in reality, we are in Wembley Stadium territory, welcome to a band with more hooks in a single song than many manage in an entire album. And we’re only three songs in!

The self-titled new album is showcased with the high tempo new single ‘Your Neighbours House’ and possible follow-up, the Britpop tinged stomp along of ‘Surrendered’, both of which are greeted like old friends. Highlights of the set are ‘Luxembourg’ classics ‘Liquid Lips’ and a savage run though of the heartbreaking ‘Never Going Nowhere’ but the more casual fans left scratching their heads through all this are rewarded with a double bill of ‘Slight Return’ (“The taxi driver’s favourite”) and ‘If…’.

Deciding that leaving the stage before the encore is an unnecessary nuisance, the band sticks around for the final double of impressive new offering ‘Last Song But One’ and a spirited and explosive ‘Bluetonic’ that would send us scurrying back to our old Bluetones albums, if we’d ever stopped listening to ‘Expecting To Fly’ et al.

This isn’t cheap nostalgia, this isn’t one final jog round the block, this is a band still on the top of its game, long after the Melody Maker covers and Top Of The Pops appearances have been and gone – but we can guarantee, if said magazine and TV show still existed, this is a band who’d still be ready for its close-up.

Brilliant.