I stumble through the doors of the Bull and Gate’s back room just in time to see A Genuine Freakshow kick into the seriously sick drumbeat of their single 'Hopscotch Machine Gun Madness'. It dissolves into a super saccharine love plea between a boy and a girl whose vocals top and tail and tread on each other’s heels. This gives way to a Los Campesinos sort of wall of sound, and that’s a pretty good snap shot of the band’s set: sickly sweet post rock love songs with quirky twists, like 'I Can Feel His Heart Beats', which is about your girlfriend living in your attic for two weeks after you’ve broken up. Lead singer Timothy Sutcliffe says of the tonight’s bitter-sweet gathering “I’ve been wracking my brains all week for something to say, but there isn’t anything to say, except ‘This isn’t how it should end’”- a quote from the last song on Cats & Cats & Cats’ last album, Motherwhale.

Well, actually, if it had to end, this isn’t a bad way to go out. Cats & Cats & Cats have been around for a good few years, and in that time have had the good fortune to play with a plethora of talented musicians: accordionists, violinists, singers, spare guitarists, and trumpeter John Dunstan, who also plays with A Genuine Freakshow. They’ve all joined the core four- Ben, Jamie, Doug and Tom, on their crazy journey through the cosmos, which has taken them around England, to Europe, and even across the Atlantic.

They begin with a medley of the first five songs from Motherwhale, and then revisit an instrumental mathy classic from their heyday, which strips the stage of all but guitars and drums. Next they are joined on stage for two songs by their first violinist, the “really hot” Eve Morrison, as a lustrous music fan behind me yells out. Everyone has a laugh at this. There’s an amazing sense of camaraderie at tonight’s gig- a lot of the audience are family and friends picked up on their journey, and it’s a testament to how devoted their fans are that they cheer just as lustily after a completely atonal and arrhythmic section as when singing along to every chorus, because, as well as being brilliantly at labyrinthine complexity when they want to be, these Cats are catchy!

All the best gigs are last gigs. There are barely two songs in a row with the same line-up on stage, but the highlight of the evening is when Ben relinquishes guitar duties, and, unshackled, you can see the sense of cabaret that he always tried to inject into the already fit-to-burst proceedings, and the outstanding front man he could have been, if his focus wasn’t taken up with playing the guitar (impeccably, of course): he dances like an ant with an afro on amphetamines, his skinny frame jerking about insidiously under his dancing afro, giving Cedric Bixler-Zavala a run for his money. He brushes his dancing prowess aside afterwards with his typical understated charm: “Frees me up for a bit of a boogie.” Don’t you just want to give this guy a massive hug?

When they’re joined on stage by Ben’s brother Sam who they are taking with them on their farewell tour of Europe, it’s like there are two Bens on stage (“We’d never have guessed!” yells the guy next to me when Sam is introduced -not to mention their other brother Dan who plays the accordion). Before the very last ever, ever song we have a primal scream therapy session, and then old favourite 'Kites', for which an inexplicable number of half naked men clamber on stage, running, jumping, climbing on one another and hugging endlessly. Massive cheers, smiling faces, and teary eyes and then it’s all over. Onstage, Jamie and Ben’s guitars, dropped haphazardly on top of each other, carry on reverberating endlessly after everyone has left the stage.