Gig review: The Killers at Co-op Live, Manchester

“What’s up, Manchester?” Brandon Flowers asks the sweaty throng packed around the Co-op Live concourse. Dressed in black, suit studded with bursts of glitter, the frontman of The Killers practically shines beneath the spotlight.

“You got everything you need?” he adds, as the new wave whir of Jenny Was a Friend of Mine starts up behind him. At the accompanying roar, he gives a tigerish grin. “Let us know if not. After all, we’re in the service industry.”

For a band whose continued success blows in the face of disparaged wisdom that they are past their commercial prime, there is a buzz of nostalgia to the Las Vegas outfit these days, a matryoshka-like appeal stretching over 20 years through terrace chants, wedding discos and end-of-the-night club ragers.

But for all the Sin City razzle-dazzle, such Anglophile affection has long since made them bedfellows to fish and chips in the British national consciousness.

On the first night of a greatest hits residency, they must get back to grips with relative arena intimacy. The band’s last tour took them into stadiums, but with the largest crowds of their career came a show perhaps too inflexible for die-hard aficionados.

Here, in nominally smaller confines, there’s more performative jeopardy; even if this kick-off does adhere to some familiar rhythms, there’s still enough detours to thrill classic devotees.

They are buoyed by the return of guitarist Dave Keuning to their touring line-up, with his angular riffs impeccably nailed against the loosely freewheeling rhythms of drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. throughout.

The pair delight as much in the stuttering synthpop of Shot at the Night as they do with the wiry dancefloor hooks behind On Top; when forced to abort Runaways for a crowd emergency, they strike up its widescreen rush again with such aplomb that it sends a frisson of magic through the speakers.

Throughout, Flowers is as effervescently keen to please, caught between Nevada preacher and Mancunian compère. “We didn’t come here to pacify, we came here to electrify!” he roars before the swivel-hipped funk of The Man.

By the time Boy has segued into a joyously faithful take on Erasure’s A Little Respect, virtually all are on their feet.

It ends with the inevitable twin flame urges of Human and Mr. Brightside; a bombastic bellow of a reminder that, among post-millennial rock-and-roll imports, The Killers might remain peerlessly in a class of their own.