If half tonight's audience look as if they are on the guest list, it is because the Hours have been around the block more than a few times. Between them, Antony Genn and Martin Slattery have produced, played, or lived with a score of big names, and their new band is a punt at giving their famous friends a run for their money. They are certainly not without ambition. The Hours give their all, surging through next month's debut album, Narcissus Road. Before the first song flows to a close, it is obvious that if wide-gauge intensity carries any weight this year, they have every chance of creaming off part of Keane's audience.

Genn takes to the frontman role so instinctively that it is perplexing he spent 15 years as a sideman. He has the presence of former associates Joe Strummer and Jarvis Cocker, so dominating the stage that Slattery, pecking at his piano, is relegated to a supporting role. It is not so much what Genn sings - his lyrics sag under the weight of mid-life bitterness - as the heartfelt way he sings it.

"All these songs are new," he half-apologises. Love You More ("more than a football team," he adds) is their stadium moment. Synchronised to footage of orchestra conductors hefting batons, Back When You Were Good is also big and epic, but parcels up emotion more poignantly. It is the album's title track ("for anybody who's ever had ideas above their station") that stitches together both aspiration and melody, hinting at greater things to come.

· At Norwich Arts Centre (01603 660352) on March 3. Then touring.