The success of the Music should trouble philosophers as much as the meaning of life. When they trundled forth four years ago, the then-teenage band sounded like the Verve at a time when interest in the recently split band had plummeted. Now the Music's Welcome to the North album sees them developing a Jane's Addiction fixation just as the US psychedelic metallers have imploded.

It's possible the Music's audience consists of people who were too young for the Verve, or never got around to seeing Jane's, but neither factor quite explains why they are one of the biggest draws on the live circuit.

The band are greeted with a sort of liberated hysteria that suggests they are also providing a welcome home for those with unfashionable tastes. From Hawkwind's psychedelic rampages to good old northern goth, the Music wade into areas of rock music that are normally sectioned off with barbed wire, emerging with something that can at least be listened to in public without landing you in prison.

They don't have songs so much as mantras, successions of echo-laden rumbles, twangs, oohs and aahs. Drummer Phil Jordan keeps things funky no matter how ludicrous it gets. However, their trump card is frontman Robert Harvey. Hailing from the mean streets of Kippax, Leeds, Harvey must have had a difficult youth, as someone who could not visit a post office without dancing like an elf. His hair seems to be on loan from Robert Plant, and his bizarre stage gymnastics invite descriptions like "backwards moonwalk" and "demented mating ritual of furious orang-utan". It is surely only a matter of time before he walks on in a jester's outfit.

The rest of the band are less sure of their identities, and at times struggle to blend their parts. However, the psychedelic dance goth of Getaway gets them some way to creating their own sound, and Harvey celebrates by hopping on one leg.

· At the Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, tonight. Box office: 0870 0600 100. Then touring.