“Life affirming” is one of the most awful phrases in the language. If you were to see it on a poster advertising a new Robin Williams film you’d be entitled to batter someone to death as a furious protest against the existential void of the modern world, though it’s probably best if you don’t.  Listening to Stornoway’s album Beachcomber’s Windowsill it’s the phrase that keeps popping into your head and when you hear the kazoo solo at the end of the video for Watching Birds below you’d have to be a right old misery guts not to start smiling. Unhappily that element was missing from the live version but it was very fine nonetheless.

Tonight’s show was the last date of their British tour. They head off to Canada and the United States next week and Australia early in the new year. With a bit of luck the audiences there will be slightly different to the range of idiots surrounding me. Why pay the best part of £20 to talk, guffaw and fiddle with your camera the whole way through a band’s set? Is it some sort of rare personality disorder? This wouldn’t be so much of a problem with AC DC or the Jim Jones Review but for a folky, often acoustic set, it really marks you out as a wanker.

On the subject of acoustic they did a couple of numbers unplugged. It was a brave experiment which would have been superb in a smaller venue or if the band had more powerful voices. The Fleet Foxes managed it in the same venue a couple of years ago but Stornoway’s singer and guitarist Brian Briggs’ technique doesn’t allow him to fill a hall that size without amplification. Equally his between song banter was a little bit strained, as if an introvert was trying to pretend that he’s not. His introduction to the song Fuel Up had something to do with getting ten miles worth of fuel for a New Zealand lorry from a typical sheep. There was the germ of a joke there but it needs a bit of work.

There were a couple of lulls. A “live remix” of I Saw You Blink didn’t work but that might have had something to do with me being cross with the drunk estate agent behind me and On The Rocks meandered a bit aimlessly, rather like the Thames of which it sings.

By contrast strong songs like Boats and Trains and set closer Zorbing went a long way to explain why this sensitive young band left a lot of people going home happy on a miserable November night.