“We’re going on a bar crawl after we play, if you guys would like to accompany us,” suggested Robin Pecknold, the frontman of the Seattle quartet Fleet Foxes. He might want to be careful about issuing such invitations lest his group’s increasingly besotted following takes him up on the offer.

No matter that in this subterranean sweat-box most of the audience didn’t stand a chance of seeing the seated Pecknold – it took only a bracing blast of the opening number Sun Giant to put the brakes on the bar-side chatter. In the time it took for Fleet Foxes to sing, “What a life I lead in the summer,” the Pied Piper-like effect that the 21-year-old’s Pecknold’s songs exert became clear.

You would think a modicum of arrogance would have set in by now, not least in the wake of a clutch of five-star reviews for their eponymous debut album. That Fleet Foxes are still thrilled by the noise they make together was made manifest after Ragged Wood– with its dancing high-life guitars, freight train rattle and those ever-present four-part harmonies – freewheeled to an exultant conclusion. Most bands would have quietly got on with the business of playing the next song. Fleet Foxes spontaneously exchanged high-fives.

In their way, moments such as this perpetuated a sense that Pecknold and his chums were no less bystanders to their own synergy than everyone else. If his own songs sound like excavated curios from a lost America, he’s no slouch when it comes to excavating other people’s obscurities. His version of Crayon Angels by the Seventies Californian songwriter Judee Sill found its way into Oliver James, the final tune on Fleet Foxes’ album, in a segue so natural that you struggled to pinpoint the join.

Oddly, songs that, on record, accentuate the solitary experience of listening to music had the opposite effect played live. Perhaps it was the faintly ecclesiastical overtones of Fleet Foxes’ harmonies, making those present feel like part of a congregation. Or maybe it was the shared sense of discovery that a great new band instils in its followers. While the cause may have been open to debate, the effect was measurable in goosebumps.

Touring: myspace.com/fleetfoxes

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