Commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of The Smiths’ seminal second album, Meat is Murder, are acclaimed cover band The Smyths – an act so good that the epithet ‘cover band’ really does not suffice. This is a tribute act to which tributes must be paid.

The set consisted of the Meat is Murder album in its entirety, bookended by just about every Smiths anthem that any diehard fan could want. Opening with ‘The Boy with the Thorn in His Side’, an initially rigid crowd were soon won over with a succession of blistering favourites, culminating with ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’ before the interval which really got the Academy’s cohort into gear. By the time ‘Stop Me’ came round, a full on mosh pit had erupted which made making notes on the performance pretty much impossible.

Of course, the inherent trepidation with cover bands is that there will be a degree of silliness that’s usually only overcome with a large quantity of alcohol. On paper, the whole idea of ‘the cover band’ is absurd: a few extremely dedicated fans practising and performing the songs of a single act over and over hoping to achieve ever-improved emulation. What makes The Smyths so great is that the gimmicks and props are very much a secondary concern, the performance itself being paramount. Musically, they did an astounding job of breathing life into the Smith’s fiendishly difficult and complexly layered guitar-based songs with just a single guitarist and a bass player. The vocals and stage presence of the frontman were also brilliantly reminiscent of all that’s best of Morrissey’s own live appearances.

The difference between your run of the mill cover band and The Smyths is the difference between a look-alike and a good impressionist – the former is a talent-free similarity, the latter is a laboriously rehearsed theatre that captures something’s spirit and essence. I am unfortunately too young to have attended one of the Smiths’ proper gigs in the 80s, but after this show I really do feel as though I have a good idea of what it would have been like: powerful, ecstatic, young and alive.

And now is the time to discover The Smyths. Morrissey’s recent debut novel, The List of the Lost, left the Guardian’s Alex Clark lamenting the loss of ‘Moz-as-was’. The lyrical genius of the Smiths that offered a generation a lifeline out of loneliness is now a distant memory. For my money, The Smyths offered as authentic an experience of transcendental musical magic that any Smiths fan could possibly hope for. This is as good as cover bands get; the gig wasn’t just good for a cover band performance – it was also a great show in its own right. The ultimate joy of playing those timeless songs shines through in the Smyths’ performance, but over the course of the tremendously enjoyable evening, the pleasure and the privilege was mine.