The Boy Least Likely To have all the flashy pop tricks you'd expect of a band signed by Simon "Spice Girls" Fuller. There are swooping disco hues, bubble machines, sudden plunges into darkness. But forget any idea of sex appeal or glamour - this band's spiritual home is the pre-teen school disco. "Dry ice," comments singer Jof Owen, nodding his head appreciatively at guitarist Pete Hobbs. "That"s a nice touch."
Owen and Hobbs met as schoolboys in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, and they've recreated this era of Day-Glo colours and 1980s pop on their debut album, The Best Party Ever. A cultish confection of Beach Boys harmonies, country rhythms, breathy whispers and glockenspiel, it's got the naive charm of Huckleberry Finn and the sticky sweetness of Hubba Bubba. Yet, lyrically, Owen grapples with growing pains, viewing the world with suspicion, his future with dread.
Not that you'd know it from watching him. Augmented by a five-piece band alongside Hobbs's wheezy harmonica and acoustic guitar, Owen traces the brief nostalgia of Warm Panda Cola. His arms open wide, feet spread, he jiggles and whoops like an earnest Playaway presenter.
The band's greatest strength is their energetic cuteness - the recorder that weaves through I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star, the heart-melting jollity of Be Gentle With Me that sends Owen into a frenzy of fist-clenched air-punching. But they're hampered by dismal harmonies and Owen's barely-there vocals are overwhelmed by the happy-clappy melee around him.
Though the testy Monsters proves the band are capable of kicking out the kitsch, they rely on a tweeness that makes the Magic Numbers sound like Metallica. During My Tiger My Heart, the keyboardist theatrically pushes her long blonde hair away from her face and slowly eats a homemade fairy cake. Owen's tender ballad over, she tosses a remaining cake into the crowd and into the eager hands of Sir Tim Rice, whose daughter Hobbs dates. Even Simon Fuller couldn't have planned that one.
· At King's College, London (0870 400 0688), on April 19.
