When does a band shed its cult status to become a genuine mainstream contender? For Canada's Stars, it may be on a night like tonight, when queues and touts jostle outside the venue three hours before showtime, and the club is so sardine-packed that breathing in and out requires prior negotiation with your neighbour.

The group have been shaping erudite, lithe electro-pop for seven years, but recent fourth album In Our Bedroom After the War looks poised to mark their breakthrough. This smart quintet have two singers: Amy Millan has the better voice, but it is sometime Sex and the City actor Torquil Campbell who throws the Bono poses and hurls bouquets into the crowd. Their more dynamic moments can suggest Arcade Fire, but in truth Stars have more in common with artists like Steely Dan or Prefab Sprout, who routinely buried lyrical razor blades just beneath the surfaces of their sleek, glossy pop.

They sing, haltingly, about overwrought relationships falling apart and the numerous serial atrocities committed in the name of love. Campbell and Millan's loving/warring couple call-and-response on Midnight Coward recalls the Beautiful South's barbed-wire AOR, while the delicate Window Bird works because the guitars and synths' insatiable rush is the perfect soundtrack for the romantic turmoil depicted by Millan's breathless, melancholic words.

It can all get too polished, and The Ghost of Genova Heights veers dangerously close to soporific Deacon Blue territory; but then a gorgeous encore of The Night Starts Here sounds like St Etienne, with their gentle whimsy replaced by an urge to revel in the thrill of the moment. It is heartening evidence of a vibrant band poised on the cusp of success.

· At Academy 3, Manchester, tonight. Box office: 0161 832 1111. Then touring.