Waiting outside in the enormous queue it seems like the entire population of nice, well brought-up young men and women of London is here, not covered in the accoutrements of an indie kid past, but showing just enough beards and band t-shirts to constitute a tribe. There’s a metal detector on the door – maybe to prevent anyone shooting the roof when M. Ward plays one of his many paeans to inner-city gun crime? – but I think it’s probably unnecessary for this crowd.

As the world of gigs and live music grew seemingly inexorably bigger, the industry around Rough Trade records and shops has grown in conjunction, harnessing the spending power and general goodwill of this big group of nice middle class kids who like their records untouched by big radio stations, the churn of music video channels, or being picked up on a whim by the till in Tesco.

So there’s something odd about the fact that this is a pretty big market, these nice young people, people who like smaller bands, but go to gigs in pretty big numbers. And Monsters of Folk are the perfect pretty big band for this pretty big market. They’re a modern/alt/indie Traveling Wilburys, comprising M. Ward, Jim James and two members of Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis (Ward and Oberst even took the Roy and Bob parts for a cover of Handle With Care with the peerless Jenny Lewis a couple of years ago). They’re nice young men playing good ol’ boy music, and - like the Wilburys - they’re a little bit too good to sound like something hastily thrown together for yuks.

On stage, striding out besuited and beaming, they confidently crash into Say Please and Man Named Truth, booming out into this art deco 1930s palace with music as crafted and polished as any of the façades and fittings they’re reverberating around. The songs, especially in this big glitzy room with its mega speaker stacks, sound like a pumped-up stadium take on the American folk form these four are experts in making. Whether roaming the stage (Ward) or staunchly holding their position (Oberst), MoF are vets at holding the floor and projecting. You admire the ability, the playing, the songs, but the size of it and the oomph of it feels a little disconnected, like a package tour of Soul greats or 80s hitmakers where the crowd are loving seeing their heroes.

The individual monsters take it in turns to play mini sets of their own songs (Oberst inspires some particularly incongruous grunting and whooping from some of the men in the audience) and reconvene to finish in spectacular style. The crowd are happy. The MoF are happy. But I think I’m going to go home and enjoy these songs a lot more in my front room with a bleary Sunday hangover than with a big band of big names in a big room.