The Burns Unit, Jazz Café

It’s a testament to the authenticity of the Scottish folk ethos that this band even exists. A bunch of mid-career songwriters going on a musicians' retreat, getting caught in the vibe, and deciding to form a band. It sounds like something from the Sixties. So sometimes do they, at least when Karine Polwart goes all Sandy Denny. And they half look it too, with eight of them on stage swapping vocal duties as a musical collective. And then there’s the hippy names like King Creosote and MC Soom T, which sound more jazz than folk. But despite being both experimental and folkie in their approach, their music is something else.

Last night’s gig confirmed The Burns Unit as the superior indie group they are. Their name may sound like a Polish death-metal band – it actually alludes to Robbie Burns from the “Burnsong” retreat where they met – but their pedigree is pure non-commercial pop. Emma Pollock was half the voice of The Delgados, King Creosote plays sophisticated folk-pop and between them all they have played with Teenage Fanclub, the Skydiggers, the Orb and KT Tunstall.

But what’s really appealing about their album, Side Show, is the variety. They don’t just sound like a good introvert indie band, they sound variously like most of them, from Belle and Sebastian to PJ Harvey. And with such a pool of artistically competitive writers involved there’s very little repetition of feeling or mood. Despite first meeting in 2006, they have only just started touring. As Emma Pollock explained to a packed Jazz Café, their work rate works out to “reverse dog years”. But for a band with one album released in the doldrums of last year’s summer holidays, they sure attracted an interestingly diverse crowd. In fact it seemed that only two things united the audience - being a little more introspective and a little more discerning than normal.

Last night’s gig was the band’s first in London and they were promising half an album’s worth of new music. There was such an abundance of interesting songs available that oddly the band plumped for two of their more conventional and, for me, pedestrian numbers to open with. “Future Pilot AKC” saw King Creosote looking like a young Bill Oddie, and sounding like he does on many of his solo records. “Majesty of Decay”, whilst pleasant enough and echoing Yo La Tengo, still failed to ignite the room. But with the first new song of the evening things started to get really interesting. It was the initial appearance of the night of diminutive Scots-Indian MC Soom T who sang “Open Road” like a helium-fuelled, rap-inflected rockabilly munchkin. In her tracksuit and with her street mannerisms she looked such a charming delinquent next to the comparatively conservative Karine Polwart that half the room seemed to instantly fall in love with her. Polwart, dressed up like a Seventies lampshade, led the vocals on the next track, “Helpless to Turn”, which like its sister track “Blood, Ice and Ashes” showed how The Burns Unit's gothic-pop numbers showcase extraordinary aspects of her voice seldom heard elsewhere.

With the ever-changing duties on stage, band members coming and going, and the crowd pressed up against Emma Pollock in her Little House on the Prairie dress (pictured right), there was something of the hootenanny about the night. Especially in new song “Tupperware”, which Pollock and Creosote said they had written that morning and seemed they were still writing as they went along. But if it was half-finished their voices have never sounded better as they weaved in and out and did a slow dance with one another. Pollock and Creosote’s laid-back confident stage manner helped make the band’s unconventional presence seem natural. She seemed so at ease that she even made her overdriven guitar, as incongruous as a machine gun in the hands of someone looking so prim, seem perfectly in place. But in a band of front men, the front man of the night had to be lanky, goofy Canadian Michael Johnson who knitted the evening together with guileless enthusiasm.

Of course in a varied evening not every song was to everyone’s taste. I found “Going Wrong” a little sentimental, “Sorrys”, a nursery rhyme about alcoholism, too pretty for its own good, and Russian-Jewish folk campus saga "You Need Me to Need This" just a little too much. The MC Soom T-led carnival stomps “What is Life?” and “Send Them Kids to War”, and Fairport Convention-styled “Since We’ve Fallen Out”, however, were nothing short of exquisite. Finally, “ringmaster” Michael Johnson introduced the band as circus performers, in the circus song closer “Crawling Back”, and encore duties were taken up by twee popper “Troubles” and new alt-country excursion and certain future single “Round and Round”.

One of the pleasures of music such as this is the feeling that it is simply done for the considerable joy of just doing it. You sense that as long as there’s enough money in music to keep going, they will. But for these eight, doing it together involves logistical challenges and considerable will. The strength of the new material they showcased tonight shows the will’s there. Here’s hoping that the practicalities are sorted to release another CD soon.

• Find The Burns Unit on Amazon
• The Burns Unit are on tour until 19 Jan

Watch a mini documentary on The Burns Unit