The problem with Coldplay and Keane is that, however much you tolerate their music, their lead singers were at the front of the queue when the nerdiness was handed out. How many more records would these bands sell if their frontmen could wipe those hangdog looks off their faces? So you can understand why Kubb's record company think they have it nailed with this London fourpiece.

Kubb specialise in the kind of arena-sized balladry that has Coldplay racking up the frequent-flyer miles, but in place of Chris Martin is the far more soulful Harry Collier, whose shuddery tenor conjures up Antony "Johnsons" Hegarty and Jeff Buckley. With a voice like that, there's no point in bothering with backing vocals, which, at the Scala, made the sporadic efforts of the other three members seem heroically foolish. Collier certainly deserved a more pristine presentation than the venue's PA system could offer.

Kubb's debut album, Mother, was already familiar to the audience - a good few of whom were couples, who took the emotional punch of openers I Don't Mind and Remain as a signal to lock into embraces from which they never emerged. Collier got the girls on side by gazing broodily into the middle distance on Wicked Soul, a piano-based highlight whose ambiguous lyric left it unclear whether the narrator was a stalker or a harmless weirdo. The males in the house seemed more ambivalent: there were enough rattling guitars to classify the music as red-blooded rock, but wasn't there something, oh, a little metrosexual about the falsetto that rounded off several songs? There's plenty of promise here, and with Coldplay away on tour next year, Kubb's time may have come.

At King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, tonight. Box office: 0141-221 5279. Then touring.