Paul Smith on stage on Friday

MORE than 15 years after indie rock surged to prominence, becoming one of the defining music genres of the 2000s, it still has a following that belies its disappearance from the musical zeitgeist.

As their fellow indie band, We Are Scientists once sung, “The scene is dead, but I’m still restless”, summing up many in the Roundhouse on Friday as they packed out the venue on Friday.

Lead singer Paul Smith appeared on stage wearing a Trilby, almost part of the service-issue uniform for indie bands of the time – Babyshambles’ Pete Doherty its most famous exponent.

Smith declared the night’s gig as ‘singles night’, which meant it was a much-enjoyed hour-and-a-half run through of their greatest hits. While his energy bounced around the stage, arms and hands outstretched at various points and despite the guitar that normally can switch the crowd into a mosh-pit, the crowd took a while to get going. However by the time the band got to Our Velocity, in the middle of the set, they seemed to shift into gear.

Smith had appeared with a black blazer over the top of a t-shirt which said ‘No War’, a nod to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The politics continued as the gig went on. He namechecked Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Suella Braverman before playing The National Health from the 2012 album of the same name.

“The list goes on and on. Just when you thought it couldn’t any worse, is what people say, but it’s kind of true,” he said. “This song was written many moons ago but it was written about a strange sickness that engulfs our country where people think there’s some sort of dreamland we need to get back to, they are imagining things. We need to live in a place we live in, in a responsible manner rather than harking back.” He later reflected that “things get incrementally worse, and nobody notices until they do.”

The classics continued, with Books from Boxes, Versions of You and Apply Some Pressure finishing off the main set, before an encore of The Undercurrents, Girls Who Play Guitars and Graffiti.

The tightly congested arena eventually bursting into life for the heavy-guitar intro of the latter, which begins “That’s enough, I can’t take any more” – perhaps its most political message of the night.