He looks like a typical young punk in his skinny black jeans, studded belt, leather jacket and narrow wrists tensing around his guitar, - until the end of the opening song Time Stands Still, that is, when Tim Hoey flicks his floppy fringe out of his eyes, grins at the audience and utters the fateful word "G'day!" And thus it transpires that Cut Copy are not a rock band from New York but a dance act from Melbourne, Australia. A smiling, happy one at that.

Of course, whether a band are dance or rock doesn't matter any more, as Soulwax, Clor and the Faint have recently argued. All of these groups meet somewhere in the middle of the two, borrowing a 1980s electro-groove and uniting a synthesiser pulse with twanging strings; drum kits with drum machines.

But Cut Copy, founded by Dan Whitford, seem content with a smoothness that borders on bland, the music a coffee table pastiche of its predecessors. Even their name suggests dull replication, while their album title, Bright Like Neon Love, suggests something that glitters but is not gold. "I call your number but I can't get through," they sing on the track Saturday, adding little to the tired pop theme of hanging on the telephone.

That's not to say that Cut Copy don't put on a good live show - far from it. Images of cartoon wolves and men in fox masks flicker on a screen behind the drummer, and the enthusiasm of the two frontmen is infectious as they pogo around the stage. Trendy young fans put paid to the myth of sulky London audiences by jumping halfway to the ceiling.

Compared with the subtle passion of Colder, or the understated sweetness of Au Revoir Simone (their support acts tonight), though, Cut Copy seem shallow. Like a bunch of warm guys in pursuit of something cool.

· At the ABC, Glasgow, tonight. Box office: 0870 903 3444.