Plenty of indie legends have disapproved F Scott's Fitzgerald's famous line about "no second acts" down through the years.

But few renewals could be more welcome nor more deserved than that of Gaz Coombes.

The Supergrass frontman, a former Brighton resident, came back this year with an astonishing Mercury Prize shortlisted solo album Matador and the cognoscenti scrambled to get back on board the Coombes Express.

A few years back Supergrass played one of their final gigs at a dispiriting rock festival in Arundel in front of a few people huddled in the rain.

On Monday night Komedia was a heaving sold-out tribute to a man whose songcraft and musicianship have always elevated him above the indie landfill.

Lazy music journalists have described Matador has a maturing from the cheeky-chappie, sideburn-wearing boy of Alright fame as if the intervening 20 years both with Supergrass and on his own haven't been laced with fantastically evolving music.

At Komedia though he kept mainly to Matador and rightly so for it contains his most consistently rich song writing yet.

With his unmistakeable voice and dextrous guitar and keyboard work the new songs soared. Buffalo, the wonderful The Girl Who Fell to Earth and the towering Detroit were undoubted highlights.

He even threw in crowd-pleasing Moving to remind us that the back catalogue might be due another airing soon.

Five stars for a glorious two-fingers to Fitzgerald.

Five stars