"I can honestly say that it's ten years since I've seen a band that makes me feel so good," Dave Grohl said recently, and watching My Morning Jacket you can see what he means. There is something almost unbearably romantic about the way this five-piece from Louisville, Kentucky, reiterate the basic values of rock'n'roll.
Although they only play for half an hour tonight, My Morning Jacket are quite overwhelming. Neil Young's most intense periods with Crazy Horse are an obvious reference point. But plenty here - the elegaic 'Steam Engine', in particular - sees singer Jim James take the intimacies of lo-fi bands like Galaxie 500 then embroider them with gnarled, expansive Southern rock reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynrd.
A weird mix, perhaps, but utterly compelling in practice - not least because the spectacle of My Morning Jacket is so enjoyable, too: a precision freak-out involving yeti-length hair, flying Vs, clenched fists and, fantastically, a Bonham-style drum solo at the end of the first song.
You have to wonder what Zane Lowe's Radio 1 listeners, tuned into the live broadcast, make of it all. Or, come to that, the middle-aged man in garish Hawaiian shirt stood next to dotmusic, who turns out to be the BBC's political correspondent Andrew Marr. Tonight's big attraction, notionally, is a rare club gig by the tireless, globe-lapping rock behemoths the Foo Fighters. Strangely, Grohl and company don't seem confined by the small venue, as is the case with so many other downsizing stadium rockers.
If anything, though, they do seem a little weary. Foos tours have a familiar pattern: astounding, economic gigs at the start (as at Reading Festival 2002); decent, but fractionally self-indulgent ones at the end, a year down the line. So while 'Times Like These' and 'All My Life' are still clipped and fierce, other songs - like 'Have It All' - are refitted with long, noodling codas that don't really suit them.
It's easy to see why this happens - even a consummate entertainer like Grohl needs to keep himself interested one way or another after a whole year of playing a broadly similar set. He also does so tonight by ignoring a few of the Foo Fighters' most obvious hits (no 'This Is A Call' or 'Walking After You') and delving into some album tracks less frequently played, like a proggish expansion of 'Stacked Actors' and an ultra-rare outing for first album thrasher 'Weenie Beenie'. All very nice for the obsessives, of course, but a bit frustrating - at times, close to boring - for those who see the Foo Fighters as one of the best singles bands of the past decade.
Even the hardest working men in showbusiness, it seems, could do with putting their feet up once in a while.
