Beat Crusaders must have overheard one of those critics a couple of years back saying "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll" and taken it literally, for what you get at their gigs is tons of cheap stand-up comic banter sandwiched between immensely hummable pop hymns. Remember the speedy guitar pop of The Wannadies? It's like that, but with keyboardist Thai slipping in dead cute 'n' corny '80s synth hooks, which, more than anything else, define the band's sound.

They take the stage at Shinjuku's Loft doing a demented Madness-like dance routine and wearing their trademark cardboard masks depicting crude black-and-white computerized images of their faces. Video screens show cartoon images of them running about -- an unsubtle "Yellow Submarine" ripoff -- and after howling like wolves with stomach ulcers for 30 seconds, they get stuck into their catalog of unsurpassable three-minute anthems.

The live house is packed with teenagers bopping crazily, wearing white, sweat-soaked towels round their necks and pumping their skinny pale arms toward heaven. From the back, in the dark, it looks like a thousand swans on a small choppy lake shagging like mad.