Supporting were Chad Valley: a delightfully eighties medley of keyboards, synthesised drumbeats and a colourful and kinetic film accompaniment. Vocals versatile in pitch and tone punctuated the hits of bass to great effect and carried the songs through the set with great effect. Ending his set on a note of thanks directed towards the Mountain Goats for having him, an intolerably long interlude began the gentle rise of tension in the room to something that could be called by London’s standard ‘fever pitch’: an Australian trying to get the crowd to cheer the Mountain Goats on and speed up their ascent to stage. All such attempts fell on apparently deaf ears. Welcome to London.

Given another twenty minutes of preparation time, the headliners took the stage in a somewhat unseemly flurry of introductions: unseemly, but thoroughly enjoyable. John Darnielle began his set in typical style: entering dialogue with the crowd in a once again typical warm and well-humoured manner. 1 Samuel 15:23 was to be how the set would start, in a wonderfully more full-bodied form than its album counterpart – piano replacing guitar and John’s voice far more of a roar. An uptempo version of Old College Try was the successor to this, and served to do nothing but blow me away: a full-band expansion with John’s voice in the jubilantly aggressive range in which it excels and Peter on supporting vocals fleshes out an already amazing song with a greater musical depth than anything present on Tallahassee. Cotton was another song performed with far greater vehemence than that of the recorded version: full vocal exertion on the part of both vocalists and facial expressions which could only be the result of truly enjoying performing. The set continued with such great musicianship and such great awareness that they were performing: there was nothing static about any element of the performance. Even during the songs John performed on his own, the execution was fluid and animated.

The official set ended with Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod, Going to Georgia and This Year: the ante was most definitely upped by these performances – dynamic songs, all of which were incredibly popular with fans – Hast Thou and This Year had a vast majority of a large KOKO crowd singing along with great aplomb. The observation made by John soon after This Year that the crowd, despite the size of KOKO, was an incredibly intimate one was truly supported by this grouping of people together in one place and singing as one – this one was to have nothing on the one of No Children’s audience chorus, but that was to be seen.

A band who will play three encores and spend the best part of two hours on stage is not one to be sniffed at: more fan favourites crammed in right at the end. As well as that, a cover of Franklin Bruno’s Houseguest gave John a chance to demonstrate his stage eccentricities: wonderful interplay with the audience and great hands-free gesturings. No Children was prefaced by the almost standard declaration of John’s that you better practice singing it before you need to: definitely enough of a proposition to get the crowd screaming along as one. For a sense of community at a venue, this gig is definitely one of the best I have ever attended.