If syntax were somehow part of the zeitgeist, then Mew would be remarkable among new bands simply for their lack of a definite article (see the Thrills, the Kills, etc). Sadly, it isn't. Mew are a group of worryingly clean-looking boys from Denmark, from where, having set up their own label, Evil Office, they were welcomed into the wider world of corporate rock with Alan McGee as their manager. "How many of you guys actually paid for a ticket?" one of them asks the capacity crowd, not realising that it is perhaps a little early to be worrying about that Faustian pact.
They are, however, immediately impressive, opening with the recent, splendidly named single Am I Wry? No. It is an avalanche of stuttering drums, jagged guitar and airy, vaulting melody that betrays their love of My Bloody Valentine. Their greatest asset is Jonas Bjerre's voice, a remarkable, sugary, androgynous coo that is capable of hitting impossibly high notes. It is an odd trick they are attempting to pull off, a conflation of angular art-rock unpredictability and melancholic AOR - I can't imagine anyone else who would think a hybrid of A-Ha and My Bloody Valentine would be a good idea - and in this oddness they are extremely pleasing.
Sometimes, though, even in an admirably concise set, Mew's tunes become windy peregrinations and they stray into the backyard of listless Icelandic coffee-table bores Sigur Ros (albeit with a pulse). The band's filmed backdrops, too, can be a distraction: intended to inject humour and reflect the music, they can seem either banal or inappropriately kitsch. Symmetry, a duet with a projection of teenage US singer Becky Jarrett, brings back uncomfortable memories of Natalie and Nat King Cole, or Bono and Lou Reed, and doesn't justify its presence when the band have better songs that we don't get to hear tonight.
At their best - the vertiginous twists and turns of SheSpider - there is evidence of something really special. But there is also too much polish and too little danger here. Mew could be Dawson's Creek shoegazers, or they could be something truly unexpected. A little dirt is what the mix requires.
