★★★★

Despite not having an album to promote since Vanishing Point back in 2013, Mudhoney have been regular Brighton visitors since. “We did it again!” bellowed frontman Mark Arm, after what you could comfortably call a reassuring performance from his grunge stalwarts.

Arm was on fine form, grinning throughout. One half of the set saw him behind his guitar, the other as just man and mic, prowling the stage. Both were brilliant. Starting the night with I Like It Small (from their last album), the sound was so familiar - with its scratchy guitar, stop-start rhythms and schoolyard screams - that it was impossible to think you were watching anybody anyone else. Even a Roxy Music cover was imbibed with the squall of these Seattle icons.

But like any band with a near 30-year catalogue to plunder, the greatest cheers were reserved for the older tracks. Suck You Dry was a prime cut delivered early in the set, and even arguably the band’s most well-known song, Touch Me I’m Sick, sat in the centre, free of fanfare but faithful to the raucous original. 1991’s Something So Clear, meanwhile, was by far the heaviest track of the night, verging on the darker heavy metal that has long been an influence on the band.

“You want the grunge to be in perfect tuning, right?” asked Arm by way of explanation for some minor guitar troubles at one point, hinting at - even ridiculing - his band’s lofty status within the genre. The audience laughed back, and then it was straight into the next song. Efficient, comforting, reliable – three words no one would have used to describe Mudhoney in 1988.