The concept album is something that has been around for a long time, but Public Service Broadcasting are perhaps unique in being a concept band. They take snippets of historical broadcasts from the BBC, the British Film Institute, and NASA's control room, for example, and build whole albums around a particular conceptual idea. These have included the Welsh coal mining industry (Every Valley), the space race (The Race For Space) and, most recently, the last flight of Amelia Earhart (The Last Flight).

These albums are in many ways anti-algorithm records, as they reward listening to the whole album in order so you get the full extent of the narrative storytelling. With this in mind, I was wondering how they would translate it live. Would they play a whole album and add tracks from elsewhere in the back catalogue at the end? Would they choose to mix things up, and if so, would this approach be effective? They went with the mixed approach, and despite my initial reservations, it worked incredibly.

One of the intro tracks was Bowie’s Sound and Vision, which is the perfect description of what followed. The stage backdrop was a huge aeroplane cockpit, the dials of which changed throughout, alternating between the cockpit layout, video, animation and live video footage of the band during the performance. Clearly a huge amount of thought and creativity had gone into this, as it was a brilliant show and one of the best examples I’ve seen of a band and backdrop in harmony.

The show started in the air with Electra and The Fun of It, and tracks from The Last Flight formed the backbone of the show, but we were soon heading underground to the South Wales coalfields, then into space via a twirl in pre-war Berlin. My concerns about this matching across albums were totally misplaced, as the band used the tempos of the various tracks to seemingly create a whole new narrative. It was one of hope, adventure and euphoria, celebrating the human capacity for exploration, invention and ingenuity. The whole show was really uplifting, with standout tracks for me being Night Mail, A Different Kind of Love and a full-on funky version of People, Let’s Dance. Public Service Broadcasting are ploughing a unique furrow, and seeing them live, melding their music and visuals into a stunning performance, was a real privilege to witness.

Public Service Broadcasting were performing at York Barbican