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So, you've been complaining that all new bands sound like Radiohead and Oasis, and maybe Nirvana, wondering why they sink so happily into polite conformity, why they won't take a chance? Then you see the wilful Robots In Disguise, and suddenly wishing we'd never got past the Lonnie Donegan stage seems like the sanest option.

Signed to Sneaker Pimps' Splinter label, this band certainly have an angle, but it's far from right. Two girls dressed identically in jeans and cap-sleeves who call themselves Dee Plume and Sue Denim. Criminal mullets, somewhere between Suzy Quatro and David Bowie. Synchronised 'robotic' dance routines. The air of performance artists at play. It should be terrible, and God, it is.

Let's salute them for a second though, because if Robots In Disguise are irritating, they are irritating in ways that no band has ever been before. Falling within an evil pentangle linking The Slits, Gary Numan, Bis, Toyah and (somewhere in there) Wire, they peddle few stirring ballads about feeling a bit sad. Instead, they get out a megaphone, sing a (rather good) song about a homicidal attachment to their hi-fi, and grin at each other with all the joy of girls who had their inhibitions out with their tonsils. By the time they're jogging on the spot, making some angular parallels between games lessons and the pressure to succeed, you can't help but like them.

We shall draw a veil over the recorder. If you can bear to take your hands away from your eyes, they might be one to watch.

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