Despite their idiotic name (taken from a song by British Sixties eccentrics Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band), Death Cab For Cutie are no novelty act. The Seattle quartet's current and sixth album, Narrow Stairs, leapt into the American charts at number one and gave them their first Top 30 British hit.

Last night's show at an uncomfortably packed, giddily enthusiastic Koko (part of this year's iTunes festival) unveiled a band whose moment has come at last.

And, as if to hammer home the point, leader Ben Gibbard has evlolved from a bespectacled geek with David Cameron's hair into a luxuriously maned, spectacles-free love god. "Right now," he noted, "I feel like I'm in a really good movie."

In their world, Gibbard's winsome voice (a less mannered Neil Tennant) and despairing lyrics meet guitarist Chris Walla's enticing musical backdrops and a tub-thumping rhythm section.

Those basic-sounding ingredients are juggled feverishly into a beguiling cornucopia, from No Sunlight, the gorgeous slab of spry pop with more hooks than an angling festival, to the more tangled Summer Skin and, as the audience squealed in delighted recognition, the urgent Soul Meets Body.

The centrepiece, I Will Possess Your Heart, took its cue from The Cure's A Forest and New Order's Blue Monday. It began with a languid, five-minute bass-heavy introduction, incorporated elements of Can-style krautrock and climaxed with Gibbard singing this stalker's saga sitting down, drowning in dry ice. Musically breathtaking, visually sinister, it was the peak of an evening of peaks, although the clattering The Sound Of Settling ran it close.

Strangely, they sagged in the encore: Gibbard's solo showcase I Will Follow You Into The Dark was wetter than last week; while Cath... was lumpen drear, before the stately transatlanticism reminded us just what all the earlier fuss was all about. Mostly marvellous.

Brixton Academy on Thursday, sold out (08444 772000).