Stop reading this for a moment. Now try and remember a time in your life when Elbow weren’t around. Bearing in mind they’re due to celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2027 – and were functioning under a different name for seven years before that –  the chances are that they’ve been an omnipresent factor. They were already old hands by the time THAT SONG came around, promoting them to the big league and ensuring all involved probably never needed to worry about money again.

Even so, the casual observer might be surprised to find them still selling out a sizeable Monday night open air show on the back of their fourth number one album out of the past five releases. Neither as massively popular or widely reviled as musical cousins Coldplay, you wouldn’t blame them for playing it safe and holding onto what they’ve got. Instead Audio Vertigo is a daring piece of work for a band at this stage.

Thus they arrive in Dublin with their tails up, even if illness in the camp means the substitute bass player has had to learn seventeen songs in twenty-four hours. He joins an expanded line-up including backing vocalists, strings and a brass section used to replicate album’s opening pairing of ‘Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years’ and ‘Lover’s Leap’. It also becomes rapidly clear why Elbow are still a live draw – they’re incredibly good at this.

Much of it comes down to Guy Garvey, who guides the evening with the kind of effortless charm that you can’t teach in music college. He regales us early on with his day spent in Trinity College (“I read that book of yours”) and how impressed he was with the list of famous alumni writers:  “Wilde, Beckett…..De Burgh”. Each Elbow bloke gets their moment in his spotlight – as does their monitor engineer, his Waterford based sister and the aunt and uncle of the backstage crew member who kept them entertained by doing doughnuts in a golf buggy. You suspect that Shania Twain wasn’t quite as good at the between song chat.

Their songs are merely an extension of his personality, elegantly downbeat and charming. You’d be pushed to deny that there’s an Elbow template but when they get it right, boy do they get it right. Material from across seven albums fit together nicely as though they were written as one piece, telling the story of lives lived and experiences shared. The new songs that shake things up, with ‘Balu’ and ‘Good Blood Mexico City’ plugged into global and modern influences, building on the sound of crunching set closer ‘Grounds For Divorce’.

Overall though, this is a night for beautiful music. ‘Kindling’, ‘Station Approach’, ‘My Sad Captains’ and especially ‘Lippy Kids’ all prove that they were doing just fine before The Seldom Seen Kid came along and equally so since. The sky – stone grey all evening – finally breaks to reveal a purple sunset over the college buildings and we reach that point in the proceedings; a song they’ve played hundreds of times in various settings, the audience participation tricks they’ve used just as many. It doesn’t matter. ‘On A Day Like This’ is one of those once in a career moments that few get to provide and millions get to enjoy. A world without it – or Elbow themselves – would be a poorer place. More power to them.