Five stars

If ever being typecast to a 'scene' killed a band - this is the one.

Ride began as four boys from Oxford barely in their 20s with a knack for distorted noise pop who rose and fell like the record label that discovered them, Alan McGee's inventive Creation.

Now four men in their mid 40s, the reformation was predictable after guitarist Andy Bell found his services were no longer required by Oasis after their hiatus and more recently after the demise of Liam Gallacher's Beady Eye.

The preferred artistic option.

They are greeted with a deafening noise at the Barrowlands, the perfect most intimate of venues for them to show whether they can still cut it. And cut it they most definitely do.

Ride were/are a glorious, psychedelic indie guitar pop trip of a band who should have had a significant entry in the history books of British contemporary rock devoted to them.

But they were killed by public/their response to terminology and pigeon-holing. Bell, Mark Gardener, Laurence Colbert and Steve Queralt were the poster boys of the 'shoegazing' scene later alternatively dubbed more viciously as 'the scene that celebrates itself' from 1990 to 1993.

They grew at a pre-internet time when the music press were heavily influential and could make and break a band.

Ride were the darlings of Melody Maker and NME but were the subject of sneering as their pretty faces were also ideal for the teen pop mag Smash Hits.

After two acclaimed albums and a host of killer EPs, the boys changed tack. Instead of sticking to their guns, they embraced Brit Pop, with their third album Carnival of Light and by 1996 it was all over.

The band themselves were critical of that extremely difficult third album referring to it as Carnival Of Sh*te.

Significantly there are no songs from that tonight.

Instead the whooping crowd, a mix of thinning hairlined nodders who remember them in their youth, and younger converts, are treated to prime Ride; the taste and vapour of what they were and what they could have been.

This was supposed to be billed as the first date on the reformed band's comeback tour - which sold out in 30 minutes. But such has been the demand for their services there have been a series of American shows and a showcase in their home town of Oxford before the Glasgow arrival of the fab four.

Any doubts that they could recreate that beautiful noise were soon dispelled and by the time we get to a hypnotic, mesmeric Polar Bear four songs in, the spell has been cast.

They were never the most dynamic onstage but this is worshipful atmospheric music and their disciples are respectful and adoring.

While the man-in-black Gardener may have filled out over the years, those wistful vocals remain dreamy as ever and that kaleidoscopic melancholy enduringly alluring.

But Ride were more than just a British band infused by the sonic cool of My Bloody Valentine, the harmonies of The Byrds and the experimental fret fuzz of Sonic Youth; they knew their way round a memorable pop hook.

And so when the first chimes and ahhhhs of Taste are played, the room finds it's voice and combusts. It reveals itself as the perfect indie dancefloor filler combining a sublime collision of euphoric melody, cooing airy vocals and that gorgeous sucker punch guitar crash. This is their Smells Like Teen Spirit and just as visceral. Gardener smiles says "you're a top crowd" and wants a picture of the devotees before plunging into a rampant Vapour Trail.

When a feedback-heavy Drive Blind erupts with its mash of melancholy and white noise menace and the Andy Bell guitar squall totem of the "this one's for all you lot" Leave Them All Behind is encored I am left with the overwhelming feeling that they missed a golden opportunity over 20 years ago.

There are many undeserving bands who became far bigger than they were or are. Just maybe this time round they will get the respect they so richly deserve.