Everyone loves a trier and Maximo Park try harder than the rest.

Even before he had bellowed a note, never knowingly under-dressed singer Paul Smith made his point that this was a spectacle rather than a mere concert. Wearing white jeans, white jacket, white shirt, pink tie and fedora, he resembled a Graham Greene character, even if his singing was more akin to Ant (or, perhaps, Dec).

Smith didn't stop there. He charged hither and thither across stage, he pointed at the audience (who pointed right back) and he said "thank you" so often that some of us were thanked to death.

Behind him were disparate characters, as watchable as they were likeable: Archie Tiku, a bear of a bassist; powerhouse drummer Tom English; Duncan Lloyd who looked like Bill Gates's more nerdy brother but played guitar almost as mellifluously as Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante, and endearingly manic keyboardist Lukas Wooller, who dressed as if Cutting Crew were still with us.

The pop-punk songs didn't quite match the spectacle, but on the road-hardened material from their album A Certain Trigger they came close, particularly the plaintive bluster of Going Missing and the heroic closer, Apply Some Pressure.

Nosebleed ("about kissing on a bench in the evening"), the pick of the new fare, showed a slight broadening of the palette, but in truth Maximo Park are refining their myriad strengths and the response accorded to familiar and unfamiliar alike by a capacity crowd suggested it's the right course for now.