Low

Low have always been the most humble of bands, and tonight is no different: standing tinily under the darkened canopy of the vaulting transept of this cathedral, five small red-gold arches that mark the sub-altar breaking the inky darkness at their backs, dressed in sombre unfussy black like devout new postulants.

But humility is not the same as faint-heartedness: and the spare, slow, exceedingly precise, ineffably beautiful thrum and din that fills the huge space around us – seeming, like the darkness itself, to go upward forever - is as simple and startling and powerful as a handmade altar in the desert.

As with cathedrals, the tremendous emptinesses in this music – the famous minimalism, the heartstopping distances between timpani hits, the notes gently dampened before they’ve escaped, the tentative waver of a guesting musical saw (take a bow, Joss Moorkens) – is what matters: the infinities of space are what make us stop and look, and become still and listen.

And we do, focusing on the twin harmony at the still centre of their secular spirituals, their voices always a consistently demure distance apart, like medieval singing companions, sombre and joyful: Alan’s voice yearning and wan, Mimi’s vibrato flickering quietly like a guttering candle.

A breathtaking, human-sized miracle for us, and an apt diversion for whatever gods might have been listening.