The Big Moon, KOKO, London

It’s been a big year for The Big Moon. Having kicked off January as one of a charge of bright-eyed newbies, full of energy and promise with a bag full of bangers to boot, they end 2017 as one of the year’s bona fide successes. Critically, they’ve managed what few of their peers have: concocting an album in debut ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’ that tickles the pickle of the industry’s more traditionally po-faced corners (bonjour, Mercury Prize) while losing none of its giddy glee. More importantly, however, they recruited an army of proper real life fans along the way too, ones who fill every gig out and swell Jules, Soph, Celia and Fern’s gang into the thousands.

It seems only fair and just, then, that tonight’s final show for a while – one last hurrah to round off the album, tour and year in general – is a sold out celebration of a truly joyous band. Because the only people that look happier to be here than the all-singing, all-dancing crowd, are The Big Moon themselves.

Bounding on stage and launching straight into ‘Silent Movie Susie’, what follows is a comprehensive run through of their output to date. From the stop-start rattle of debut single ‘Eureka Moment’ to the slower lilt of album track ‘Zeds’, it’s a snapshot of a golden moment: with one perfect record and a handful of B-sides to their name, they play the lot and there’s not a single duffer among them. ‘Happy New Year”s wistful chorus (“I’m never gonna be this young / And everything I do one day will just be done”) has become a set highlight; ‘Bonfire’ is still a gloriously rowdy hell-raiser, while ‘Cupid’ and ‘Formidable’ are full on mate-hugging, air-punching anthems. Then they dish up their recent cover of Bonnie Tyler monster hit ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’, and the good vibes in the room threaten to explode the roof.

When The Big Moon return, it’ll be with a clutch of new songs in tow. It’s an exciting thought, of course, but also one that inevitably means a tactical bit of setlist trimming from the oldies. So tonight, let’s toast to this one last time that we get to greedily guzzle it all. Here’s to ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’: an album that believes in the sheer, joyful power of positivity. And here’s to The Big Moon. Onwards and upwards, into the stratosphere.