“We first played here about 10 years ago… and it’s just as hot as last time!” commented Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble mid-way through their sell-out set at Bristol’s Fleece. Hot wasn’t the word – crammed to the rafters, the tiny ancient pub has obviously seen some hot ‘n’ sweaty ones, but I’d imagine last night was right up with the sweatiest of them all.

Opening up the evening they did as they did in London: a short acoustic set, a quick break, and then a full electric set with lots of B-Sides and rareities. Perfect for the obsessive Idlewild fan, not so for those not so familiar with their rarer b-sides. A lot chattier than last time, Roddy took requests – a girl yelled for “Meet Me at the Harbour”, which they launched into instead of the setlisted “Gone too Long”

The intimate show served as a warm up for a festival the band are playing today in the South West, having been asked to play by the Levellers who organised it. Asking the crowd what goes on at a Levellers festival, he shrugged and said “I guess they drink a hell of a lot of cider!”.

The band were on fine form – as tight as ever, stopping mid-song and restarting in perfect unison, and managing to make old songs sound as fresh as anything a band newer than them have done in years. Roddy, seemingly at ease with their longevity explained how he’d just turned 32, and some of the songs had been around since he was just 17.

By the time they went off stage at 11:20 Idlewild had came, seen and conquered the south of England. When they’ll be back on tour is anybody’s guess, but we were just lucky to catch them at the top of their game.

“We’re only two songs in and already Paul’s broken the drums!” smirks Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos as drummer Paul Thomson attempts to re-assemble his broken kit. This turned out to be a recurring theme of the evening, as later on Nick’s guitar amp and strings gave up the ghost. However, regardless of all of that it was nice to see a stadium-filling band play a tiny boat in Bristol’s harbour and deal with the problems of playing a tiny stage and going back to their roots.

Kicking off the evening was Chilean five piece Panico. At first I was sceptical - South American party band supporting British indie kings? Really? But somehow, it worked. Starting off carefully, they quickly began to woo the crowd with their CSS / Gogol Bordello / Ladytron / The Music mixture of sounds, and energy laden front-man in the shape of the (ingeniously named) Memo.

Initially I was going to compare them solely to CSS, the Brazilian party stars of 2007, but realised pretty soon that that would be doing Panico an injustice. They’re much more talented, and their songs have more depth, and a sense of urgency that would put others to the test. The gorgeous Carolina held it all together more than capably on bass, providing some calm next to Memo’s crazy shapes. Whilst Carolina held it together, each member clearly is quite talented, and collectively they’re definitely ones to watch in coming months and years.

Lyrically they switch between Spanish and English, which certainly makes for interesting listening, and a more exotic feel than a typical British evening in inner city Bristol. By the end of the set they had everyone bouncing, and were the perfect warm up for Franz Ferdinand - everyone was ready to party.

9:45 rolled around and Franz marched on stage, self assuredly and immediately plunged into a new song, “New Thrill”, which went down a storm, and got them off to a good start, before peppering the rest of their set with newer tracks.

“Tonight, we’re going to play you some new songs, some old songs, and…” “some songs!” yelled a heckler as Alex was introducing themselves, to much laughter around the venue, and smirks from the band. “Yes, yes, we’ll play you some songs, if you want, they’ll be good ones!” smiled Alex, clearly in his element and enjoying the intimate surroundings of the Thekla.

Many of the older tracks sound just as good now as they did when they first arrived on our airwaves back in 2004. Take Me Out has renewed vigour, and surprisingly didn’t have the crowd bouncing the most. That award went to the set closer, This Fire, which saw the Thekla start to sway quite scarily as the boat rocked in the water with 350 people bouncing to the encore closer.

Keeping the set short left us all wanting more from the headliners, though Panico surprised me and could be ones to watch for the future.

After the jump: setlist and pics

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