Proving that union ’twixt man and beast need not always be an inglorious affair, British Sea Power fairly crackled with animal tension at the Natural History Museum on Saturday night.

The Brighton quirk-poppers’ performance in the South Kensington haunt’s palatial surrounds was inspired, even for a band whose eccentric live resumé boasts gigs on a boat across the Mersey and in England’s highest pub.

The band, whose pastoral punk revels in images of wildlife and falling Antarctic ice shelves, must have felt at home as they tore through an impressive set as part of Exhibition Road Music Day, a joint venture with the London Festival of Architecture with the aim of bringing the SW7 postcode to the public eye.

Our dashing eccentrics gave a generous performance which saw early gems such as Fear Of Drowning jostle handsomely with the fizzing likes of No Lucifer and Waving Flags, with its welcoming message to eastern European immigrants.

It’s rare that music this tubthumpingly brilliant is so unequivocally noble of intent, but these guys have a black belt in subverting stadium rock clichés, as their recent LP Do You Like Rock Music? will readily attest.

And since we’re on the subject of migrant folk, the projected footage of birds in flight over Arctic landscapes while The Great Skua’s instrumental swells unfolded in the foreground might just have been the unlikely highlight of the entire evening — good work chaps!

BSP were, of course, only the icing on a large and multi-faceted cake — among the 150 or so performances to feature at this year’s bash, German electro-pop troupers MIA proved a big draw over at the Goethe-Institut — although possibly only because people mistook them for London rapper M.I.A.

Sadly not on the menu for this galfronted combo is a sense of irony, with a procession of synchronised dance moves, sincerely offered peace signs and costume changes conspiring to bring the word “rockutainment” dangerously into earshot.

Earlier on at the Serpentine Gallery we’d had cartoonish electro from teen idols Late Of The Pier, whose ear for a nagging hook had the front rows grinning from ear to underage ear, while at the same venue there was ambient respite from Four Tet and breathless, hyperbolic pop from Florence And The Machine. The latter lady in question has a formidable set of lungs though she’ll no doubt prove too frilly for some.

There’d been no Talking Heads-style songs about architecture but, from the toothsome main event on down, there was plenty to suggest Exhibition Road Music Day has a solid enough foundation to build upon next year.