There's something odd about the Don't Look Back series of gigs, in which an album is played in its entirety: a negation of the surprises that you want from a live event. "We all know what's going to happen next," murmurs Tindersticks' Stuart Staples as he approaches the microphone. It's one of roughly six sentences he addresses to the audience all night, adding to the impression that we really could have just played the album at home.

And yet, if listening to Tindersticks II alone in a darkened room is an intense experience, how overwhelming that torrid 1995 album becomes on stage. With the six Tindersticks' already ample instrumentation augmented by a phalanx of violins and violas, two cellos, trombone, trumpet and musical saw, the songs sound more convulsive than ever, churning with passion and melancholy, clawing and crumpling with pain. It's right that Staples says barely a word: these songs have the squalid allure of film noir, sucking listeners into worlds so ferocious with feeling they make real-life relationships seem pallid.

It's not a perfect gig: for a start, Tindersticks II was an esoteric choice, its murky mood too unvarying. For every gut-wrenching maelstrom like Talk to Me or A Night In, there's a track like Snowy in F sharp Minor or No More Affairs that just drifts by, moodiness by numbers. And it's disappointing that Staples sings Travelling Light, one of the great male-female duets, on his own.

The encores, though, are faultless, the exquisitely poppy City Sickness coruscating with light, I Know That Loving calling to mind late-1960s Elvis - quite a feat considering that Staples generally sings like an emphysemic old codger wheezing down the stairs. They even get away with playing My Sister twice, making this mordant fairytale sound richer and stranger the second time around - something that could never happen at home with the record, of course.