“Good evening, we are The Futureheads from North East England,” announced singer-guitarist Barry Hyde to a hero’s welcome at the sweltering Gaelic Club on Friday night. Unseasonable warmth meant the mixed ex-pat and Aussie crowd was juiced in more ways than one, and the severely jetlagged Geordie band – used to some of the coldest temperatures on Earth – experienced their moments of being more than a little shirty.

After apologising for their three year absence from our shores, the band launched straight into Walking Backwards from their most recent album This Is Not The World. This four-piece had the whole crowd whipped into an unashamed short, fast and loud lovin’ frenzy. Tight as two coats of paint and smarter looking still, The Futureheads have a disarming way of both assaulting and pleasuring your hearing at the same time.

The sound of the band means comparisons to other post-Brit-pop-punk bands such as the Kaiser Chiefs are inescapable, however there is something much more business-like and serious in the way The Futureheads conduct their live business. Drummer Dave Hyde plays in a Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones fashion, as if every beat may be his last – but he’s ever so slightly bored. Brother Barry and he have some kind of Liam and Noel on stage blue moment over a song choice – actually stopping a few bars into a tune to argue, while the tanned indie masses bop awkwardly and uncertainly to the sudden silence.

Having said they’d rehearsed over 40 songs means the set-list was a delicious treat of both old and new songs. The band has a chemistry most other acts would happily murder for. They also compliment, insult and encourage participation from the audience at various moments. Cutting up the guitar like a butcher was nerdy-yet-strangely hot guitarist Ross Millard on yet another crowd pleasing song, Decent Days and Nights. There was clapping. There were super-fans fighting for position up the very front of stage, getting over excited and accidentally pushing speakers, leading to Barry warning one poor soul they were “really getting on my last nerve. We’ve flown for 58 hours.”

While I pondered naively how this was in fact possible, we were hit with a wave of instantly recognisable alternative radio friendly tracks such as Skip to the End and Beginning of the Twist from their self-titled 2004 album. Bass guitarist, the Franz Ferdinand band member look-alike David ‘Jeff’ Craig commented from above grey baggy eyes it was better to do a gig on a hot night to an enthusiastic crowd whilst being deprived of three days’ sleep.

Never having done this myself, I cannot disagree. All I know is a band with some snappy tunes created a mosh-pit and a moderate ‘circle of death’. A grand night was had by all, leaving us to ponder – where would pop music be without a bunch of cynical Brits?