It’s the nature of the beast. When time and opportunity arrive so do responsibility and obligation, which can carry their own joys. But sometimes it’s worth regressing. Sometimes, like when your favourite band tours Australia after almost a decade on hiatus, you do something a bit silly. As silly as six shows in a week across three cities.

For me the band is Sleater-Kinney, a trio of top-class musicians who marry surgical precision with overwhelming instinctive emotion. Go listen to them, I’ll wait. 

Guitarist Carrie Brownstein found plenty of success as a writer and actress in the past 10 years. For some, though, she will forever be the kicking, shouting guitarist whose minimal, jagged playing always stands out from the crowd.

Like any band worth their salt, Sleater-Kinney’s appeal is not universal. Philistines tell me Corin Tucker’s voice is overwhelming. The pure joy I derive from hearing Brownstein and Tucker’s interlocking voices and guitars over Janet Weiss, a strong contender for the most underrated drummer in music, may be subtle for some.

For me it is unfailing catharsis strong enough to inspire hotel bookings, elaborate flight plans and reliance on the kindness of strangers to see them play everywhere from a Victorian farm to the Sydney Opera House.

The adolescent dream in a late-20s body has its drawbacks, like the fact almost nobody can commit to weeknights – let alone interstate – shows. The first night in Fortitude Valley, I am alone waiting for the big timber doors to open. I am inexplicably nervous.

Hours before the show the band step into the front bar. Gleaming fans’ eyes lock on them as the performers seemingly brace for impact. Corin Tucker’s daughter stands with them, prompting fans to relent and stay stoic at their schooners.

There are no Beatlemania screams for Sleater-Kinney before the show starts. Fans share their ardent admiration for a band whose commitment resembles a pro athlete. They train hard, they play hard. There are no efforts at mythology offstage, and few at outright mania in the crowd.

The Brisbane show is rapturous, their performance undiminished since their last Australian tour in 2007. Complaints trickle through in later days that this show was a bit flat, the band less than enthused. I disagree, loyally. 

Flying to Sydney brings back the anxieties. Will they play an identical set? Ultimately no, offering enough difference to appease a recidivist like me. Is this really worth it? Basically, it becomes like any other holiday – pleasantly gruelling, less restful than anticipated and bearing no resemblance to expectations.

In Melbourne I sit alone in the front bar, listening to the sound-check through a bar wall. In Sydney I leaped over rows of seats to beg for a setlist I now treasure. I walked away with guitar picks, equally fanatical friends and scratches from a cat that couldn’t tolerate my tenure on an air mattress. I waited at stage doors for hours in rain, almost fruitlessly.

The shows themselves were exceptional. I ticked all the fan boxes – I bought shirts, I met the band, I grabbed souvenirs on my way out. But nothing tops the music, seeing the musicians that created something that shoots through geography and time to hit you where it hurts every time do exactly what did the damage. 

Rarely am I lost in the moment but these shows find a neglected sluice between my adrenal glands and my spine. I doubt it will ever get the same use again. It fires up whenever a song’s precision cuts through, a cue is struck exactly or the show diverges from the well-worn recordings. I am aglow throughout each show.

I’ve been to gigs where you realise there was an essence to the band you missed, a hardness or a scene that goes from a whisper to a shout in person and alienates you. These shows offered the opposite – I have rarely felt as comfortable as I did listening to the same songs about isolation, desperation and political rage from the front row.

A week of indulgent teenage fantasy for a bald man closer to 30 may seem a bit sad. I read that in plenty of looks when I explained why I’d be out of the office. But despite all those reasons to cringe I committed, let go and loved every moment. 

Now I just hope they come back.