Generally described as "cinematic" - code for "prone to moroseness; just add muted horns" - the Dears are more a horror double-bill tonight. As Montreal's contribution to North America's current run of indie Anglophilia, they have been picking up album-of-the-year reviews for their first UK release, No Cities Left. The difference, though, between the quietly gloomy CD and the live spectacle is remarkable.

On stage, there's a desire to shock. It's executed subtly but effectively, with no "My other car's a hearse" theatrics. Disorientation sets in from the start, as the group materialise under blue-green lights that keep them perpetually in shadow. It's hard to establish exactly how many there are, as half-lit figures flit between mic stands, keyboards and drums. Two do stand out: leader Murray Lightburn, whose voice and phrasing evoke Morrissey, and keyboardist/singer Natalia Yanchak. When they duet, she's a sweetly toxic Nancy Sinatra to his sepulchral Lee Hazlewood.

Very affecting, but you wouldn't want to encounter Lightburn on a midnight stroll. Who knows what's going through his mind as his foreboding baritone hovers above melodies like a nail waiting to be driven into a coffin? When he wants to take things up a notch, as on the lengthy opener Postcards From Purgatory, he switches to an ogreish growl. Most unnerving of all is the buttery croon he unwraps for the jangly, Smiths-influenced Lost in the Plot. From what cobwebbed recess did that come? Still, it seems to work for a fan near the front, who urges Lightburn on by holding a crutch aloft.

When not healing the sick, the Dears focus on transforming their CD's pretty tunes into discordant freak-outs. A couple of ballady new ones, Mountains and Unandi, reveal a Radio 2 sensibility, but the final moments are what stay in the mind: Lightburn ululates into a loud-hailer as a siren goes off, and shadowy figures slip off stage as anonymously as they arrived. If their aim was to raise goose bumps, they achieved it.