St Etienne's latest album teams them up with Britain's hottest teen-pop producers Xenomania, but teens are noticeable by their absence from the Concorde. If you knew nothing about St Etienne, you would still guess at their career's longevity by glancing around the audience. They look like people you normally see massed outside playgroups, swapping tips about how to deal with the terrible twos. Brighton's babysitters must be quids in tonight. It's thirtysomething couples as far as the eye can see, and have St Etienne got a new album for them.

Tales From Turnpike House might well be the London trio's best since their debut Foxbase Alpha, but, lyrically at least, it is its polar opposite. The 1991 album goggled at the richness of life in the big smoke; Tales From Turnpike House hitches their idiosyncratic dance pop vision to songs that fret about the safety of London's streets and assess the pros and cons of relocating with a thoroughness that would impress Kirstie Allsopp.

It is a career high, and you can understand their desire to show it off. The spangly disco of Stars Above Us and the thick, satisfying harmony pop of Sun in My Morning are great, while Teenage Winter - in which St Etienne ponder the wisdom of collecting old singles, a move somewhat akin to Bruce Springsteen announcing that cars aren't much cop after all - is exquisitely heart-rending.

But an hour of unfamiliar material is a lot to wade through, and you have to question the wisdom of interspersing it not with their early hits, but tracks from Tales From Turnpike House's dour predecessors Finisterre and The Sound of Water. Indeed, towards the back of the hall, some voices begin to question it audibly. They're silenced by an encore of 1991 single Nothing Can Stop Us.

Enjoying a creative Indian summer, St Etienne clearly have no need for nostalgia. Whether the same is true of the people who come to see them, however, is a different matter entirely.

· At ABC, Glasgow, tonight. Box office: 0141-204 5151. Then touring.