The quick way to gauge whether New Yorkers the Essex Green are your sort of thing: if you're put off by knowing that the three members were formerly in groups called Ladybug Transistor and Guppyboy, then closer proximity will have your toes curling. If the idea quickens the pulse, though, their album, The Long Goodbye, will be January's essential purchase. It references a strand of fey 1980s indie-rock defined by wispy vocals and knock-kneed waifs. Speaking of whom, who'd have thought so many of those knees (or their descendants) would exist in the 21st century? But here they were, below jumble-sale skirts, a flashback to the only time in history when knobbly nerdiness was aspirational.

The whole evening, in fact, seemed designed to replicate the ambience of a student-union bar circa 1986. First came the three support acts. Check-shirted James William Hindle crooned apologetically, and bearded Norwegians Herman Dune were so winsome the ceiling fans threatened to blow them off stage. Thomas "St Thomas" Hansen merited special recognition for getting jiggy - his sparkly dancing feet kicked life into what would otherwise have been an incredibly hesitant stab at self-worship, called (possibly) When You're in St Thomasworld.

Many of the knobbly knees had already left by the time Essex Green crept on stage. The Brooklyn band themselves were up past their bedtime, and it showed in their tentative strumming, tapping and whispering.

The set came together around singers Sasha Bell and Christopher Ziter, who rotated lead vocals. The mistake was giving the tuneless Bell so many leads; music of this delicacy is ill-served by pub acoustics anyway. Ziter, on the other hand, was relatively forceful. His numbers, such as the haunting, countrified Lazy May, gave the show some substance. As purveyors of wistfulness, they weren't rubbish, but they fulfilled the stereotypes about bands who fidget and giggle rather than get to the point.