If their touring history is any indication, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats love playing the Twin Cities. And we love them back.

Of the nine years since the rootsy Denver-based folk-rock band’s first album was released, they’ve come to town eight times now, and have played progressively larger venues with each visit.

The band’s first Minnesota gig was in 2015 at the cozy Turf Club in St. Paul — Rateliff brought a behind-the-scenes photo of the occasion to flash on the video screen during their show Saturday at Xcel Energy Center — and they’ve since played First Avenue, the Palace Theatre, a Bernie Sanders rally in St. Paul, a headlining set at the bygone Rock the Garden festival and a concert last year at Surly Brewing Festival Field that sold out so quickly a second night was added.

This is to say, they’ve put in work.

Saturday’s concert at the X was the band’s first local arena show, and man, they rocked it.

Rateliff, who grew up in rural Missouri, began his career largely as a solo folk musician in Colorado but found a more up-tempo rock vibe with Night Sweats albums in 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024. The band’s most successful (and cathartic) songs, including big hit “S.O.B.” and also tracks like “I Need Never Get Old,” “You Worry Me,” “Survivor” and “David and Goliath” from the newest album, feature Rateliff’s twangy voice exploding out of guitars and keyboards and horns into roaring, soaring choruses.

Part of the band’s appeal, I think, has been that these moments feel so much larger than the rooms in which they’re being played. Venues seem to burst at the seams. This is harder to pull off in an arena-sized space, and to their credit, Rateliff and Co. didn’t try to compensate for the size of a venue like the X by resorting to flashy theatrics. They trusted their songs.

A sparse stage design almost reminiscent of a retro TV studio gave Rateliff plenty of open space to playfully shuffle around, with ruffled hair and a showmanship that came across as authentic and humble.

The seven-piece band included, gloriously, a horn section with a trumpet and two saxophones, and everyone delivered. No funny business, just good musicianship.

In 2020, Rateliff released a solo album, his third overall and his first since starting the Night Sweats, with a more melancholy sound that recalled his early-career work. Some recent Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats tracks, including several on this year’s album, “South of Here,” are similarly a bit softer.

Near the beginning of the night, before Rateliff had boomed his way into every nook and cranny of the X, a couple of softer songs verged on feeling thin.

But once Rateliff was confidently behind the wheel, tender songs filled the large space, too, and the gut-wrenching title track off that 2020 solo album, “And It’s Still Alright,” earned a place on this tour’s setlist as the emotional core of the second half of the show.

And the St. Paul crowd was clearly on board with the whole range of the night, underscored first by the unexpected standing ovation for moody, orchestral opener Gregory Alan Isakov and then by the packed crowd’s raucous cheering and hooting and hollering for Rateliff and the Night Sweats.

So, Mr. Rateliff: Same time next year?