Two-and-a-half years ago, Morning Runner were sitting in a scout hut in Reading writing their first song. Fast forward to a couple of singles and a support slot on Coldplay's stadium jaunt this summer and they're headlining their first tour. "It feels like an accomplishment," admits singer and guitarist Matthew Greener, peering shyly from beneath his overgrown fringe.

It's also a lot to live up to. Luckily, Morning Runner have the strength to withstand it. Their music is a mix of energy and whimsy; keyboards change from retro organ to gracious piano, bass lines vacillates between creamy and funky.

Like Mr Benn emerging from the changing room, they appear with Greener affecting the staggered delivery and slashes of guitar of Bloc Party, before turning into an approximation of Starsailor, wobbly rasp and all, this side of Keane. This transmogrification is wearing. Just as you're coming to terms with the threat of What Expectations, a new song with a rhythm as hard as a flexed muscle, it evaporates under the melodic piano and fluid jauntiness of Gone Up in Flames. The crowd stop and start dancing so often it almost turns into a game of statues.

What saves Morning Runner from being merely a litany of impressive moods is the big, heart-wrenching songs, twisting and sighing with invention and glistening beneath a sharp edge of violence. Be All You Want Me to Be has Greener singing with aggressive resentment, his guitar notes high and trembling, while his jittery passion holds together the slipping, sliding melody of Can't Get It Right.

It's in Burning Benches, however, that the band's warring personalities blend together. Beginning as a lighters-aloft anthem, it builds into a jagged attack that punches sentimentality out cold. If they carry on as well as they've started, Morning Runner might lead the pack.