The Smith Street Band share The Living End's energy, early punk rock mind-set and, when delving beneath the surface, a joint influence from The Hold Steady, for who's songwriter Craig Finn co-wrote the headliners current title track. But that's where any similarities end. Frontman Wil Wagner's lyrics are insightful and personal. Their music is impulsive and urgent and they play to a restrained crowd, more content with holding their barrier position for the main act, than breaking stride to the music. Over the course of their set, largely taken from this year's Sunshine & Technology album, the depth of their song writing is forefront, and before long, the front rows, and indeed room, are won over.

As you first step foot into The Corner Hotel band room, the first thing you are hit with is The Living End store, a pop up shop with more merchandise than the band has songs – necklaces, iPhone cases, hats, wallets, stubby holders, comic books and countless t-shirts. It's a symbol for the business The Living End has become, which plays out over the course of the night.

As the clock ticks over to 10:55pm the DJ puts on Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and the crowd sing along, even applauding. The lights dim, a documentary like montage plays, before the band walk on stage one by one. It's a daily charade, and for the fifth night in a row, goes to script.

The retrospective tour is ambitious. When it works it resoundingly works, but two shows particularly soften its impact. The first being an under 18s event where they perform their 1998 debut, presumably to people who weren't born at the time of release, and the second, performing their most recent record, The Ending Is Just The Beginning Repeating, which is less than 17 months old.

The album, their sixth, aside from being their latest, is their most disappointing. The singles seem forced and the lyrics clumsy, as they loosely appropriate rockabilly sounds with influences of U2, Midnight Oil and The Police. They play to their strengths, which is Chris Cheney's guitar work, but those moments are few are far between, on a record that's slow and restrictive. Tonight, a reprised version of E-Boggie and a semi-ironic cover of The Wiggles' Hot Potato, both of which don't appear on the album, are highlights, as too the title track which closes the album. “We're at the tail end of the tour, enthusiasm can wane, but it's not going to. We thank you for that,” says a mortal Cheney mid set, as he looks to the crowd for inspiration, 33 shows in to a tour and with four more to go.

“Everything goes away but comes back some day. The ending is just the beginning repeating,” Cheney sings to close the album, with a sense that this might be more of a farewell tour than retrospective. If words ring true, it will be sombre to not just see such a band call it quits, but for The Ending Is Just The Beginning Repeating to be their final legacy.