Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, August 8

“Thanks for letting us play the show we want to play,” says Gang of Youths frontman David Le’aupepe as the evening draws to a close.

The show they wanted to play eschews the bluster, adrenaline, and stadium-filling affectations that have long been the Sydney-born, London-based band’s trademark. Instead, we get something more thoughtful, restrained and effortlessly confident.

It’s in the way Le’aupepe begins the performance – the group’s first in Australia in three years – sitting solo at the piano, teasing the opening chords of goal of the century.

While on record the song is a string-soaked epic with peaks and valleys and lavish production flourishes, here it is naked, fragile and breathtakingly delicate.

It sets the tone for an evening in which the band – now an eight-piece in the live setting – bypass many of their hits, and deconstruct those they do play to breathe new life into the material.

By performing the normally rousing Magnolia solo on guitar, Le’aupepe lends even more desperation to the song’s cry for help.

The Deepest Sighs, the Frankest Shadows is slowed to half time, surging with a newfound power complemented by the harmonies of singer-songwriter Gretta Ray, who provides backing vocals.

Do Not Let Your Spirit Wane starts smaller than its recorded form, the band teasing it to a powerful and majestic climax; Let Me Down Easy adds more nuance to its motorik strut, and is sexier for it.

A handful of new songs are debuted, hinting at an evolution in the outfit’s forthcoming fourth album.

Things Take Time is soulful and quietly joyous, with trumpet lines lending it a Burt Bacharach-esque lightness; in another, country-leaning song “about tarot cards” the horn adds a more desolate touch.

Peppering the set with moments of levity and humour adds to the sense that this is a group comfortable in their own skin – witness the cover of Jimmy Buffett’s A Pirate Looks at Forty, complete with onstage margaritas and dedicated to Le’aupepe’s wife, who turned 39 days earlier.

That it all looks so effortless is a trick only the truly great acts can pull off.