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As Alan Partridge said of a local business get-together, "If a bomb went off in here, society would collapse...in Norwich...for a bit." Much the same could be said of the music industry and tonight's Alphabeat 'showcase'; that peculiar phenomenon of music's great panjandrums descending upon a venue to talk the whole way through a 'buzz' band at a suspiciously early time of the evening.
But even a guestlist longer than Doherty's charge sheet and a distinct lack of paying punters isn't enough to shake Alphabeat's almost unnatural exuberance. These six Danes (three of whom are called Anders) have hit upon the key for live success: if it looks like you're having the most fun in the world, it's impossible not to enjoy watching you. Opening with their theme-song-cum-mission-statement 'Fantastic 6', boy-girl vocals and synths collide in a riot of unpretentious pop, sounding somewhere between the Scissor Sisters and B52s.
Their real trump card, though, is '10,000 Nights of Thunder', singers Anders and Stine swapping vocals like an updating of Elton and Kiki's 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' while their bandmates bound around like cats with the spare key to the cream factory - and why wouldn't you, if you knew you'd written one of the most catchy and joyous pop songs of recent years? Even in the relatively downbeat 'Boyfriend' Anders bangs his tambourine against his chest as if he's trying to break a rib - in fact, the tambourine comes off worst and proceedings are briefly halted while a new one is found ("it was very cheap," he giggles, as part of his endearingly nonsensical banter).
Even this blink-and-you'll-miss-it 5-song set makes it clear that Alphabeat have come to save us from this year's endless procession of po-faced identikit guitar bands, reminding us just how much fun pop music can be when pretension and 'cool' are set aside. Then again, if we don't want to be saved, we bloody deserve Little Man Tate: a new life in Scandinavia has never looked so appealing.
