FOR music lovers, Resident has a special atmosphere on the drabbest of days. But its talent for getting in-store shows right, clearing stage centre while listeners crowd around, makes visits by bands there a rare pleasure and a peculiar break from retail.

A shop pausing its sales, the rustle of album sleeves silenced - these invasions are always worth the disruption, perhaps proved by a queue reaching halfway back along Kensington Gardens in the lunchtime sun.

The quell to shuffle around the shelves also symbolised the enduring affection in which The Maccabees, a romantic five-piece with the quiet grandeur of a compacted Arcade Fire, filtered through distinctly English indie, are held.

A band with Brighton links, their appearance here briefly showed off fourth album Marks To Prove It, with singer Orlando Weeks offering hope-tinged melancholy and increasingly wizened reflection via reed-stringed vocals.

Spit It Out, with its desire for decisiveness, had Weeks playing piano – a new instrument to him – with measured finesse, albeit a measure of bemusement at staring into the eyes of those at the front.

Behind them, waves of undulating camera phones reached to record boisterous closer Pelican. Then normality resumed, and the crowds outside spilled back in.

Four Stars