That Seattle’s Minus The Bear find their Evening’s Highlight status usurped by a four-eyed guitar maverick and a brace of drum-thwacking and organ-mashing comrades is a strange occurrence indeed. Yet, New York trio Darediablo pull the critical praise rug out from under the more established indie-rockers’ feet with all instrumetal ease of The Fucking Champs if they’d ever employed the services of a funked-up and Motown-flavoured ivory-tinkler.

Said maverick – we’ll call him Jake, for that is his name – is the most unassuming rock titan these eyes, and ears, have perhaps ever witnessed, yet his mastery of the art of the axe is truly mesmerising. His feet twitch from pedal to pedal, fuzz to bass to clarity, while fingers dance themselves into a disorientating blur with ever-increasing ferocity. All the time, a smile remains firmly fixed to his face; likewise, keyboard whiz Matt is quite humbled by the turnout, repeating his thanks a good three times over the course of the set. Obviously, the (primarily young) faces down the front came for the complex indie-pop of Minus The Bear, but it takes only minutes for heads to nod in synchronised appreciation, and for polite applause to give way to unashamed whoops of unexpected enjoyment. Okay, so perhaps only DiS was vocalising its excitement in such a way, but we were loud.

Such a performance – one that sees many a convert approach Darediablo after their set to enquire about releases, et cetera (we recommend you seek out Twenty Paces, released through Southern earlier this year) – leaves Minus The Bear with a mountain to climb in terms of achieving a suitable impression. The sold-out nature of tonight ensures a handful of singalongs, mainly for efforts from the We Make Beer Commercials Like This, but there’s a warm reception for newer, Menos El Oso cuts, even amongst those yet to hear the record (us, again). ‘Fine +2pts’ is a predictable enough standout in a set that does, occasionally, threaten to drift into background noise rather than an attention-grabbing performance, but the final romp through ‘Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!’ is the ultimate reward for enduring the near-insufferable heat of the Underworld at maximum attendance.

The only real criticism to be levelled at a band who prize creativity so dearly is that certain songs do blend together rather too seamlessly: introductions are varied and sufficiently quirky to prick ears their way, but once the same-ol’ riffs are employed come the choruses, the differences are blotted into near translucency. But let us not dwell on the negative: Minus The Bear remain one of the finest inventive forces operating in the field of indie-rock, or pop, or whatever. Their music – both accessible and possessing a depth uncommon in so many similar projects – is wonderfully consistent and forever seeking higher states of audience mind. It’s just unfortunate for them, tonight at least, that their support band produce considerably more rock without the need for any pigeonhole prefix.