Filling in for sick support act Honda 500 before taking their own headline slot, the Broken Family peer uneasily at a crowd entirely unprepared for them. "You're all scaring me," says singer Steven Adams, gingerly trying to break the ice formed from mutual bemusement.

The problem is, the BFB don't look like renegade indie rockers; they look like a support band. Unimpressed by Adams' hound-dog expression, some onlookers chatter on until he makes it clear just who's on stage.

It's not the lack of Doherty-inspired hats that marks the BFB out as unfashionable. Despite hailing from Cambridge, they dig deep into old-fashioned, religion-fixated, American country music for inspiration.

Their first set concentrates on slow-burning heartbreak. Cocktail tracks an escape into the bottom of a glass; John Belushi is a refusal to escape that's a little too adamant to be true. When the band leave, it's with Adams' promise to return as a "more aggressive, modern, rock band".

He's not kidding. As Adams plays the dark rhythm of A Place You Deserve, it's as though Invasion of the Bodysnatchers took place backstage. His face contorts with seething hostility, his voice, which before cracked with suppressed tears, now screams with rage.

It's a rollercoaster of blistering rhythms and itchy bass. Where the Hell Is My Baby runs from suspected betrayal to unhinged murderous intent; The Booze and the Drugs details a beer-goggled obsession with a girl with dirty teeth. It's All Over and For Milton Mapes, from the band's upcoming third album Balls, add delicious dollops of pop to the writhing malcontent, but only Jay Williams' acoustic guitar dips into the previous wellspring of melancholy. The pessimistic hoedowns never falter - even a double helping isn't enough.

· At the Windmill, London SW2 (020-8671 0700), on January 27. Then touring.