Despite brief mainstream acclaim for third album ...are the Roaring Night, the Besnard Lakes remain a hidden treasure of a band - somehow managing to create music with pomp, but without pomposity. They share the seeming affinity for operatic bombast exemplified by fellow Montreal citizens Godspeed You! Black Emperor and their sundry spin-off projects, but add a pop-tinged affinity for tightly-sung close harmonies and a highly polished studio finish that has always seemed as if it would be tricky to replicate live under the best of conditions.

Last night was not the best of conditions. The end-of-summer Oxford lull was in full effect, giving us an audience that numbered in the tens, many of whom seemed from their level of engagement to be there simply to get out of the rain. The support act were a vocally talented acoustic duo who would have gone down excellently at a sun-drenched folk festival but here served as an over-serious drain on the crowd's already negligible energy.

That the band managed to make us forget this for most of their set is a testament to their talent. A few tweaks to the studio sound make all the difference - the vocals are a little lower in the mix, the fuzz on the two guitars turned up a little higher, the songs allowed to extend into pulsating sonic freakouts that (mostly) didn't outstay their welcome by a second. Keyboardist and singer Sheenah Ko adds rock 'n' roll theatrics to the mix, lunging and writhing around her bank of keyboards as she conjures up a gradual crescendo of riffs, loops and layers.

This worked wonders on some of the songs from latest album release 'Coliseum Complex Museum', which some critics have found disappointingly unadventurous. The plodding 'Necronomicon' isn't quite redeemed and perhaps isn't quite redeemable, but 'Golden Lion' and 'Pressure of our Plans', neither of which stand out in their recorded versions, are transformed into legitimate rock anthems. Not that they neglected the back-catalogue, gracing us with a wonderfully ominous and dramatic rendition of 'And You Lied to Me' from second album ...are the Dark Horse.

Honourable mention must go to way they close their generous encore - having recruited Oxford local Adi Vines, late of Swervedriver, as a backup guitarist on their noisier numbers, they repaid his contribution by covering one of his songs - a friendly, ego-free end to a night that deserved a better audience.