When Stuart Murdoch reconstructed C86 twee pop in the mid-90s and made a Brit-blagging cult success of it, he ensured that future historians would record indie as a genre of vegetarians weakly strumming songs about getting stood up outside arthouse cinemas. But his still waters supposedly run deep, and as he arrives at the Westminster scene of the leaders’ debate and opens a showcase for their politically charged ninth album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance with Nobody’s Empire – which talks of “marching with the crowd, singing dirty and loud for the people’s emancipation” – you wonder if he’s about to instigate Britain’s own velvet revolution, a very indie coup.

What transpires is far less interesting. Ninety minutes of flimsy alt-pop, sexless funk numbers and lacklustre northern soul and disco, all muted by the cloying formality of the venue. As Murdoch, who loves to dance but shouldn’t, shuffles like a focusing high-jumper to the fey Pulp of The Party Line and guitarist Stevie Jackson wields a keytar like a pike while dressed as Moss from The IT Crowd, it all feels like a fresher’s prank. They’re upstaged by their own visuals – Perfect Couple’s entrancing modern dance film, for example – and Murdoch’s absorbing persona: he shuns crowd suggestions of running for parliament because “they’d have to give me a fishing boat full of cocaine to get me through a parliamentary year” and admits they have to give the Shadows £50 whenever they play Wrapped Up in Books. The sweetest moment comes when he orchestrates an on-stage proposal, though you worry that the happy couple’s “our song” will forevermore be limp country mither Piazza, New York Catcher.

Sturdier melodies such as We Rule the School and I Didn’t See It Coming work far better, and the show picks up steam when Murdoch drags a stageful of girls and a few plucky geek blokes on stage to dance to The Boy With the Arab Strap. But ultimately, for artful indie, vote Magnetic Fields.

• At Albert Hall, Manchester, 14 and 15 May. Sold out. Then touring.