The latest in a long line of shambling Scottish indie bands, My Latest Novel have a moderately terrible name and the prerequisite girl in a second-hand dress playing the violin. Leaking from song titles likes Wrongfully I Rested and Reputation of Ross Francis is the tang of finely tuned preciousness. The feeling, very much, is that we have been here before.

And yet the band seem to be doing something incredibly odd. My Latest Novel don't appear to have written any actual songs. There are scraps of melody that never quite develop into grown-up tunes, an awful lot of crescendos that die away suddenly, lovely skeins of sparkling guitar, some brilliantly forceful four-part harmonies; bits of prettiness and surges of portent. But none of these bits feel like they belong together.

Either the band are engaged in some kind of insanely brave deconstruction of what it is that makes a song, or they simply haven't written any. It's impossible to tell which.

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul, which is a single and therefore ought to have some sense of self-possession, has a catchy enough verse melody, but no chorus, and then an exquisite violin interlude ushers in an almost jubilant, almost muscular rush and fumble redolent of any number of records you can't quite put your finger on that floated effetely around the independent charts between 1983 and 1986.

The drummer favours a Joy Divisionish style that is often overplayed, and between the four other musicians up front, no one can decide who's the focus, which creates a resolute charisma vacuum that doesn't help this curious project. If, indeed, that's what it is.

· At the Luminaire, London NW6, on September 22. Box office: 08700 600 100.