Occasionally, an unknown band will be booked into a support slot months in advance, have a hit in the meantime and on the night find themselves bigger than the headliners. Tonight the Feeling are that band - thanks to their ubiquitous easy-listening hit Sewn, which recently charted at 7 (66 places higher than Nada Surf's biggest UK single). There were 1,000 ready-made backing vocalists for its drippy "na-na-na" chorus, and as their set closed, there was a palpable end-of-the-evening feel.

When New Yorkers Nada Surf ambled on, though, they showed up the Feeling for the one-trick retro merchants they are. In America, they've gone through the modern rite of passage that starts with an act recording a song for the soundtrack to the OC and culminates in that act finding itself markedly more popular than before.

They'd had a decade before that, however, to mark out their territory, and tonight the trio profited from long experience. Though rather too rambling (they have four albums, including the current The Weight Is a Gift: they seemed to play every last note), their set was underpinned by a slouchy confidence. They have every right to feel that they're a bit special. While their melancholy mix of harmonies, minor chords and the occasional rush of power-guitar is also practiced by every Tom, Dick and Dandy Warhol, Nada Surf's version of it is especially captivating. The voices of guitarist Matthew Caws and dreadlocked, chain-smoking bassist Daniel Lorca melted together, the hypnotic effect amplified by reverb-laden guitar and drums.

Lorca took over lead vocals on In the Mirror, a song so hazily pretty that you hardly realised that what he was singing was, "I look in the mirror to see what my hair is doing/Is it kind of Skywalker, or kind of stupid?" The answer was kind of stupid, but the hair played an insignificant part in an otherwise magical set.