What was it your mum said? Never outstay your welcome and always say "thank you" when you leave? While many of us are pretty reasonably well mannered in these two social norms, the entertainment business has been ascribed very different rules. It is fairly customary to say "thank you" and leave the stage at the end of your set, unless you're a bit of an oik or a little bit precious (sometimes yielding wonderful results, admittedly). Sunny Day Sets Fire, instead, say "thank you" about a thousand times and play for over an hour. Over-compensating in one of these social areas does not mean that you can indulge wildly in the other. Get off stage earlier next time and we might be more inclined to enjoy your winding pop songs.

With a collection of faces that are, on the whole, annoying rather than interesting, it is difficult to love Sunny Day's music. It is simultaneously labyrinthine and breezy and not dissimilar to Faust when they were at their most disposable, but without the crucial reaches of dynamic variety that both of those traits require to be at their most potent. Conversely, it's quite plausible that their brazen ability to have at least one good idea per song and their Go! Team meets Scissor Sisters demeanour (with a frighteningly enthusiastic principle percussionist) will land them some loftier slots than this one very soon. Get off the stage though, we've been here an hour already.

Misty's Big Adventure are a confusingly, horribly loveable prospect at the best of times. Head honcho Grandmaster Gareth is a fantastic brainbox, a disillusioned icon for intelligent disaffection. His band is a fun vaudeville ska pop amalgam, designed for, y'know, fun with a message. The fun comes in the shape of possible gimmick Erotic Volvo (if you're not already familiar, he's a bloke who wears his nan's costume, consisting of a red sheet, blue face-paint and blue gloves stuck all over). He (it?) flails around doing camp poses, stabs himself in the eyes with his own finger and runs around the venue bashing people up. It's a laugh.

The message, on the other hand, is made very clear by Grandmaster Gareth's clever but ultimately rather obvious lyrics. The scenarios are pleasantly quirky, of course, but at the expense of the conclusion. In 'The Kids Are Radioactive', we are told of a massacre of elders by children thanks to a mobile phone mast. It's funny but futile. Similarly, 'Fashion Parade' is utterly true and noble in its indiscriminate lambasting of cock bands, but it's never going to provoke any other reaction than a bloke going "ha, so true…". To their credit, Misty's Big Adventure rarely let the message distort the fun, but they are guilty of self-indulgence. Previous claims that Erotic Volvo is not a gimmick seem at odds to his mid-song 'bursting' on to the stage, pantomime villain style. And the tawdry requests section at the climax of the set does little to advance the cause – for a band promoting a new album (the self-released Funny Times) they seem reluctant to play songs from it.

Worst of all, the abovementioned requests section omits (despite many… err… requests) their most honest and bitterly lovable moment – 'Night Time Better Than The Day Time'. That would've topped my evening off at least. It's a very difficult gig to evaluate seeing as (aside from a few new songs) you would have seen the same show a year or two ago. The fun remains, they are as tight and well-defined in their premises as you could possibly hope, but it remains open whether or not Misty's Big Adventure have any space for development left in their lofty and noble concepts.

Photo: Pete Ashton