You know how it is: you’ve had a long day at work, it’s cold and the doors to the gig don’t open for another half hour.

So you start talking to the people in the line: “Who’s the support act?”

“Anathallo”, you hear in response, in your head writing them off as another run-of-the-mill band dragged onto a British tour.

You would be wrong. You would be so very wrong. Anathallo are anything but run-of-the-mill, they comprise of seven members who play instruments ranging from guitars to xylophones, from drums to modified glockenspiels. At the same time they’re dancing and stomping their way through songs based on a traditional Japanese folk tale, with smiles on their faces and at least one instrument in hand.

To say they controlled the stage at the Scala would do a disservice to the stage that willingly submitted to Matt Joynt and his merry men as they produced sounds with their mouths other bands would struggle to reproduce with a full orchestra.

And on the subject of Orchestra’s we neatly segway to the one from Manchester who had a difficult act to follow. Despite being an excellent live band, they would have been more than aware of what had gone before them and what needed to be done to at least match it.

Blasting out Golden Ticket and Alice and Interiors early doors, the band let the feedback flow and the wah wah pedal dance as they showed how you build on an album that already sounds like it was recorded at Wembley Stadium.

Lead singer Andy Hull kept the crowd interaction to a minimum but in his brief conversation let the assembled masses know that a new album was in the works, before promptly showing the fruit of the bands loins. Two screeching guitar-driven songs follow that lean on the heavier side of I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, which isn’t a bad direction to go in.

Then it was right back to the hits Wolves At Night and I Can Barely Breathe were met with delight and fist pumps as Hull screamed “I fly so high” to a crowd which included members of Anathallo, who despite probably seeing the song five times in the last week screamed back with gusto.

After an emotionally charged Where Have You Been, Hull was left to play on with just his guitar treating the crowd to a new song which in a few months time, once the record is released, he will have trouble trying to sing above the crowds voices, followed then by a rare song borrowed from his side project Right Away Great Captain, entitled Badges.

In Hull’s own words, it’s about “How wearing your own bands t-shirt is the worst thing you could do in the world”.

That statement encapsulates this tour. Anathallo were in the crowd during the opening band, and they were in the crowd again during Manchester Orchestra.

All the bands who played looked as if they couldn’t think of anything better in the world than to be in London on a cold Tuesday night when sometimes it looks like bands are going through the motions. Anathallo in particularly looked like they were starting a motion, not going through one.