With battered top hats, streams of May Day bunting and an atmospheric backdrop detailing the serried roofs and arches of London, The Good, the Bad and the Queen manage to project a certain dishevelled Dickensian glamour.

With battered top hats, streams of May Day bunting and an atmospheric backdrop detailing the serried roofs and arches of London, The Good, the Bad and the Queen manage to project a certain dishevelled Dickensian glamour.

It's a shame that their limited repertoire of songs is not as interesting as the art design. With the two main members of the band - Damon Albarn, of Blur and Gorillaz, and Paul Simonon, of The Clash - dominating musically on rickety piano and erratic bass respectively, one might have expected the pop smarts of the former and the furious history of the latter to provide more interest. Sadly not.

Although a new band - filled out by ex-Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen on drums - the general tone is close to the late, melancholic ballads that Albarn wrote for Blur, and although their latest single, Kingdom of Doom, has a sad-eyed lilt to it, there's only so much mid-paced piano-stroking you can take before tedium sets in. Every song is cut from the same, threadbare cloth: a meandering, downbeat piano ballad, frugally adorned with cod-reggae bass burps and the odd burst of Tong's barely audible guitar.

Midway through this profoundly po-faced, self-important set, I started hoping a dub-fusion version of You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two might be attempted, if only to raise a smile. Like the other hopes surrounding this group, however, it was thwarted by dismal reality.