I'm just biding my time. At the back of the room, I'm waiting for the band to start, fiddling with my bag, pretending to text, keeping busy to defend myself from a crowded room - The Borderline is quite clearly sold out, with our collective body heat rapidly turning the room from humid to damp. I'm participating in a most favourite sport of mine: eavesdropping. Not in a creepy, secret-finding way, just a casual absorption of all conversations going on around me. Two gentleman, most likely in their mid-thirties are conversing behind me - their age isn't out of place in the room; unusually for London, the audience here must average out at thirty-three. These men are discussing the origins of the New Pornographers nom de plume - it's perhaps not as interesting as I had hoped. According to these men, of unknown repute I may add, the idea comes from an evangelist preacher who described rock music as being 'the new pornography'.

Squeezing to the front proves a challenge. As the band board the stage, the fans - and we're talking fans in the fullest sense of the word, are all jostling for position. A new position, a new conversation - a couple are talking about their combined adoration of the band, how they knew from the first strike of the guitar that they were going to be in love with the Pornographers for ever and ever, always. They said it would only take a moment to know whether this band was to be one's cup of tea. They aren't so very wrong, but the band has little to prove tonight; the collective amount of cups of tea in this audience is enough to swim in. Carl Newman takes to the microphone and announces that there will be plenty of new songs tonight [collective cheer], plenty of old songs tonight [collective cheer] and plenty of songs in between [more cheering]. To think that people talk of London audiences being 'cold'.

The New Pornographers play full steam ahead, right from the off. They've always been labelled as power-pop, the tag is deserving. It's hard not to crack a smile - this all being wonderfully free of pretension. It's wave after wave of melody - not unpredictable, perhaps a little overtly nice, but most certainly memorable. 'The Laws have Changed' sounds, in the terminology of power-pop, awesome (!) Scrap that old idea of quiet verse, loud chorus - let's go from chorus, to chorus, to chorus, each one more improbably fist-pumping than the last. To put the cherry right on this cake, in comes the counter melody, audience singing along - no words necessary, just "nana naa, nana naa", a joyous, flashing banner of sound waving it's way around the venue. 'Twin Cinema' is another set highlight, rainbow stabs of voices in harmony, a bassline thundering away, drums all a clatter, guitars darting in and out of the voices. If you're not smiling yet, there's little hope.

However, it's the new material (I didn't manage to catch song titles - do you really think I'm all ears?) that highlights the key flaw of this set. All material, new and old is played out in this enthusiastic, full-steam-ahead manner. After an hour passes, songs can't help to blend into one another, and the new material seems much the same as the old. Good news for fans but not good news for the virtues of variety. Everything is played with beaming smiles on the faces of the band, mirror-reflecting the beaming smiles of an audience. Their comfort on stage and the ease with which they play does nothing to put a fresh spin on songs.

So back to the origins of their intriguing name. I imagine the evangelist preacher who condemned rock music so, would have nothing to worry about with the New Pornographers. No matter if their lyrics may sometimes be overtly sexual, they can't seem to help giving out this impression of good clean fun. Fun, because they have made an almighty mountain of melodies, clean because they play with a smile, with simplicity and they don't ever seem to dabble with subversion. They certainly don't have the aspect of filth that their name initially conjures - or perhaps it's appropriate; Pornography being the cleaned-up, airbrushed, emotionally removed version of real-life sex. I'll try and stop thinking: tonight is about forgetting these intricacies and simply enjoying all this smiling and showmanship.