The Rakes are easily pleased: "It's Friday night, there's a bar here, there's girls here," says lanky, wild-eyed singer Alan Donohoe while surveying the scene of sweaty kids dangling from the balconies and drunken dancers throwing peculiar shapes in front of the stage.

With his smart shirt and trousers, he could pass for a member of any subculture you dare to name from the past 30 years. Because of this, he manages to tread the fine line between being rather odd and a man of the people though, admittedly, most people don't tend to dance like Ian Curtis with his fingers in a plug socket, as Donohoe does tonight.

Like those purveyors of council estate ska, Staines's Hard-Fi, the Rakes live for the weekend, singing about dragging themselves through dead-end jobs and counting the seconds until the two days when they can get drunk, party and meet girls. Here in Camden on Friday night, the celebrations begin as they probably have done hundreds of times before; the only difference is that this time the Rakes are on stage rather than gawping at it like the rest of us.

They set out their simple ethos in Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep), a taut, slick guitar pop tune that bristles with energy and intelligence, showing that they are more than simple booze and bird-obsessed fellas. Though the addition of uncomfortable-looking dancing girls for the finale of 22 Grand Job - a near perfect punk song about wage packets and talking shop - might make you think otherwise.

With all the singing about office jobs you wonder what they'll have to talk about on the next album now that they are gigging across the world instead of hatching plans beside the water cooler, but if they're still bashing out shows as entertaining as this, all will not be lost.

· At the Mean Fiddler, London WC2, October 22. Box office: 020-7434 9592. Then touring.