With just an album and an EP released, tonight's set list is no mystery. Surprise can't be sourced in deep cuts, and they've eschewed the covers trick, so it must be found in pacing.

Thus, the boys down tools a few times to let Joy sit alone to reel us in for piano ballads such as Doing It Right.

While the setlist suffers from filler that will fall away as their back catalogue broadens, the crowd is patient. Few yawns are even stifled let alone indulged. And by the end the Joan Sutherland Theatre is on its feet.

Yet surely many here who swam against Vivid's tourist tide expected a slightly more lavish production than a bare stage, male band members in jeans and tees, and lighting that alternated between the warm white and cool white of domestic bulbs.

It's true the sound is bright and tight but Joy's voice at full throttle, especially on songs like Please and So Long Farewell I'm Gone, on occasion verges on shouty. It turns beautifully to songs with a country-tinged twang, however, such as Maryland or Lost Friends.

Ultimately, this show is characterised by a sense of camaraderie and, well, niceness, that ping-pongs between stage and seats.

The sacrifice? Tension, danger and even a remnant sense there is something big at stake. Middle Kids, at least for now, a live band that is free, perhaps, but not free-falling.