Great music should be a surprise, and not in the sense of going to see Radiohead and watching them play a set of show tunes (although, perhaps ...). The surprise need not be the shape it comes in; it can be the intensity of feeling it inspires. Great music should be an experience after which you realise that, however briefly, shocks you out of daily life. Cosmic Rough Riders are back, with a new singer who used to be their lead guitarist. Of all the mediocre bands garnered by Alan McGee recently, Cosmic Rough Riders seemed the most likely to survive the debacle of the Poptones label by virtue of having had an almost-hit, Revolution (In The Summertime) and a successful album.

They open with Justify the Rain, the first song from their new album. After a while it becomes obvious that this is their only song. It is not, intrinsically bad. It sounds quite like a lot of Teenage Fanclub songs, but less graceful. The band are not inept, rather, they are workmanlike. The songs are larded with the kind of harmonies people who know nothing about the rich and strange history of harmony in popular music think are "amazing". (If this is snobbery, so be it.) Sometimes they are vaguely redolent of Big Country, but without the inherent ridiculousness that made that band an occasional guilty pleasure.

The transatlantic blandness of much of the set suggests Cosmic Rough Riders have missed a trick in not getting on to the Dawson's Creek soundtrack. Perhaps these songs have a future in the background of the pivotal moments in American teen movies, which aren't generally intended to surprise anyone - quite the opposite, in fact. Cosmic Rough Riders are back. As surprises go, it's really not good enough.

At the Raigmore, Inverness (01463 221546) tomorrow, then touring.