Stockport’s Dutch Uncles may have as strong a Netherlandic contingent as the Hatters’ match day squad, but make no mistake: in O Shudder, the wilfully outré five-piece have crafted a record that, idiosyncratic as it is quite incredible, sends ripples of relish shivering up and down the length of your spine, playing your vertebrae as Duncan Wallis does so dextrously his marimba in tonight’s opening moments. And live, it comes to life quite vividly…

Of course, so much of the attention centres around Wallis himself: beneath the quiff of Morrissey, his are the elastane limbs of a rather more slender Samuel T. Herring while his vocal cords more closely resemble an intricate tangle of Messrs. Buckingham, Russell, Taylor, Vonsild and Wilder. Yet whereas O Shudder brims with trembling brilliance intermittently reminiscent of the likes of contemporaries such as Hot Chip (Decided Knowledge; Don’t Sit Back (Frankie Said)), When Saints Go Machine (Tidal Weight) and Yeasayer (Babymaking), its true success resides in its unapologetic plundering of ’80s sonics without ever descending into sounding in any way parodical or pastiched. More Hall than Oates, even the most curmudgeonly of onlookers couldn’t not go for Accelerate, whilst the prints of Duran Duran and Tears For Fears plaster the propulsive likes of Be Right Back and In N Out. With the bass lines ‘O’ the times to boot too, it’s nigh on impossible not to shake a tail feather or two to these exceedingly louche, and thereby loveable songs of quintessentially British quirk and coital eccentricity.

If Babymaking sets the tone, Wallis somewhat forcefully informing you “want [his] baby, babies” atop tumbling marimba and xylophonic crystallinity, then further ribaldry lies in store: “I’m getting horny tonight” he tells during the gloriously globular Drips – a track that has as much in common with These New Puritans’ scatty back catalogue as it does XTC, Steve Reich or Keith Jarrett – as the hot-under-the-collar lyricisms continue. By the time a pelvic In N Out comes around, biological stumbling blocks notwithstanding, there can be few in the rapidly warming room left feeling cold by Wallis’ explicit advances and affected glances…

But Wallis’ valiant attempts to “keep it Friday night” tonight would likely amount to precious little, were it not for the backing cast comprising “sample maestros” and puppets that “would crowdsurf, [were they not] too expensive” that ensures their sultry flow rarely, if ever ebbs away. Hyper-polished, and possibly all the more so this evening, ascending Vape trails swirl around the sumptuous, stomping Be Right Back that, aptly, comes after a brief moment’s pre-scripted repose; Decided Knowledge is dangerously edgy, and with that more downright angular than most ’80s shoulder pads or standard geometry sets; to reiterate the out-and-out excellence of Accelerate, it proves a smooth, eminently dancefloor-friendly ditty, and that despite Wallis’ droll claims to the contrary. “Funky? Kinda funky? Not really that funky” he quizzes, soliloquising, when not telling of the improbable conflation of apparently incompatible musical forms from which the song was first spawned (onetime touring cronies Paramore via These New Puritans’ Organ Eternal, anyone? No? Not really, ultimately).

Later, the David Byrne-indebted Dressage gets heads turning, and the odd one talking, while other elder statesmen of tonight’s setlist, such as the expertly syncopated Cadenza, offset the inextinguishable glee of Phoenix with a typically British peculiarity and a comparably atypical joie de vivre of sorts. Nonetheless, if Wallis et al. had the intention of “mak[ing] it count” tonight, then this is at its most incontestably successful when stuff from O Shudder judders down your lugholes…