Thursday 17/02/05 Gisli @ The Venue, Edinburgh

By any usual standards, a set of slightly geeky looking stoners, with just the right number of beards and wooly hats, plus an alarming knack for knocking out scuzz-pop hip-hop brilliance, would get a fairly obvious reaction from your average gig crowd. Even without any previous knowledge of the band, heads would be nodded, and pop cultural references would duly be noted. However, tonight, Gisli is supporting The Dresden Dolls, and is performing to a largely confused set of teenagers in exciting-looking, multi-buckled trousers. They mill around, perhaps contemplating the title of their next poem, collectively wondering when the freak show starts, blissfully unaware that they are unlikely ever to encounter anyone as wilfully barking as Gisli.

"Do you lot like Gareth Gates?" he asks, seemingly without irony. "People say I look a lot like him". Given he is a slightly portly blonde with floppy hair and a blazer, this is pretty amusing. Only no-one else seems to realise he's making a joke. Still, that's proto-goths for you.

To be fair, he couldn't have tried any harder to please. With a bewildering array of slouchy beats and rhyming, fuzzy guitar wig-outs and scattered pop nuggets, all delivered with casual precision and shabby panache, it is hard to think how they could have been any wittier, entertaining or more downright immediate.

Opening with three previous singles 'How About That', 'Passing Out' and 'TV = The Devil', it's not immediately obvious why many have wedged Gisli into the kooky little solo pigeonhole mostly occupied by Beck, simply because as a band, they sound like Pavement, all great choruses and lyrical trickery that makes you laugh out loud once you've worked out what it all means. But then we get knocked silly with the utter, utter behemoth that is 'Go Get 'Em Tiger'. Not content with coming up with one of the best titles for any record ever, it's got a hook to rip your heart out for, beats to keep you up all night and some inch-perfect lyrical delivery from a bloke who couldn't look any less like a rapper if he tried. With tracks like this, it makes you wish that someone, somewhere, would please put The Go! Team on the same bill as Gisli just so you could see the walls fall apart.

Unfortunately, whoever sorted out tonight's mismatched line-up is clearly also choosing which songs go out as singles. Upcoming release 'The Day That All Went Wrong' sounds dull and lifeless, devoid of any humour, chorus or intelligence. It sounds like The Wonder Stuff drowning in mud. I'd imagine that when it's released, the B-sides will be more than worth the purchase, but this is an obvious low point tonight.

Happily though, after a swift return to bouyant slacker rock on 'Straight To Hell' we are treated to set highlight 'Can You Make Me Right' described by the man himself as "angry Icelandic hip-hop" - although if this is him angry, he must be in danger of grinning himself to death when he's happy.

As he closes with 'Don't Let Go', where Pavement goes disco (and bizarrely, doesn't sound awful), the goth kids in the black leather underwear are starting to show signs of life. If he can stir the spirits of this army of darkness, just think what he can do for the rest of us.