Of all the recent re-formations, The Verve's is among the more difficult to fathom. Eight years after their poisonous demise, leader Richard Ashcroft's solo career was pootling along in solid if unspectacular fashion. More crucially, The Drugs Don't Work and the sample-heavy Bitter Sweet Symphony tower over the rest of their oeuvre so completely that the main conundrum before the last of their six-date reunion tour was how they would fill the rest of their two hours.

In the event, they unleashed the big guns consecutively before the encore and padded out the rest of their two hours with B-sides such as the feeble Let the Damage Begin ("a good song", fibbed an understandably defensive Ashcroft) and even a new tune, the dated but endearingly soupy Sit And Wonder, alongside minor singles and album tracks.

So while this policy ensured the second half of the set was spent waiting for the hits and the four Wigoners kept themselves to themselves until an awkward group hug before the encore, The Verve were not without verve.

All effects pedals and understated gestures, Nick McCabe remains one of his generation's more mellifluous and more unusual guitarists and he dazzled during the squall of This Is Music and the relatively measured Sonnet; joyful bassist Simon Jones punched the air after every song; Pete Salisbury drummed with the alacrity of his former self and if Ashcroft's monkey waddle, gruff northern demeanour, bad haircut and medallion suggested Ian Brown is his role model, his charismatic swagger brooked no dissent.

When the hits finally arrived, they were magnificent. The Drugs Don't Work, a tale of bereavement rather than narcotic immunity, was desperately moving and while Bitter Sweet Symphony may not quite have defined a generation, it will always define The Verve and their fiercely fanatical following. Oddly rewarding.