"This is going to be our last ever tour, y'know," says Aidan Moffat. There's a swell of boos from the crowd. Moffat shrugs and stares them out, a study in blithe indifference: "It's happening and you'd best get used to it, because there's nae anything you can do about it."

A decade after singer Moffat and guitarist Malcolm Middleton hooked up in their native Falkirk, Arab Strap are indeed splitting after these dates to promote a valedictory compilation album, Ten Years of Tears.

Visually, the years have not been kind to them: tonight's stage is one slovenly slouch of bald spots, beards and beer bellies. Musically, they will prove a far greater loss. Arab Strap have often been wrongly pinned as miserabilists by people who miss the point that, as with the Smiths, a brilliant mordant wit has always underpinned their slowcore indie anthems of drink, drugs and going on the pull. The best jokes, after all, are invariably told with a straight face.

Tonight they cherry pick from 10 years of lewd and visceral angst-pop. They have always been best when most raw: Moffat's bitter mumble captures the hurt of betrayal on Here We Go, while 1996's tragicomic The First Big Weekend, a paean to 48 hours of heroic chemical and alcoholic excess, concertinas Irvine Welsh's entire oeuvre into five minutes.

Finally, the rest of the band leave Moffat and Middleton alone on stage to grind through the louche poetry of their 2003 Ecstasy anthem The Shy Retirer: "You know I'm always moanin'/ But you jump-start my seratonin". The demise of Arab Strap leaves the rock world a rather more wholesome place, but a slightly less profound one.

· At Manchester Academy (0161-832 1111) on November 29. Then touring.