MYSTERY Jets are one of those bands which have always commanded a cult following.

Singer Blaine Harrison has made no secret of the band’s knack for picking up fans for the course of an album, only for them to be replaced a couple of years later. A hardcore, however, have remained loyal. And, if tonight’s show at a packed O2 Academy was anything to go by, there are an awful lot of them. And it didn’t take long to see what had brought them out on this cold Sunday night. Quite simply, they were on fire.

As a veteran of many Mystery Jets gigs, stretching back to the deliciously ramshackle shows before the release of their first album, I’ve grown to love the quirky beauty of their sets - the bittersweet lyrics, Blaine’s soaring voice, and the obvious camaraderie between the band’s members - most of whom go back years (and in Blaine and Will Rees’s case, to their school days). But there was something about tonight’s show - the first in the city since the release of new album Radlands, written and largely recorded in Texas - which suggesed new fire in their bellies. America has changed them.

Blaine, tonight rocking the cowboy look with a suede cattle rustler’s jacket with fur collar, cuts an enigmatic figure perched on his stool in front of his keyboard, lightly holding his white electric guitar, eyes closed under his long fringe.

And we are straight into the heart of Texas from the off - opening with Someone Purer, from the new album. It’s an atmospheric builder of a song, all emotion-drenched vocals, heartfelt lyrics and twanging guitars which builds to a storm of crashing rock and a rousing chanted chorus. ‘Epic’ doesn’t touch it - this is a skyscraper of a tune and it sets the course for a full-pelt, pedal to the metal set which, at time, had the hairs on the backs of our necks twitching like death row prisoners in an Austin electric chair.

Older tracks like Seratonin and Young Love are lapped up enthustically by the crowd and highlight how far the band have come since their Stateside jaunt - their perky pop and sweet harmonies standing in contrast to the wide horizons and country-rock swagger of new songs like Radlands and Sister Everett.

Not that they’re all coasted in desert dust. The chirpy pop of Greatest Hits is remeniscent of The Kinks while Saviour could have been written by Talking Heads.

A razer-sharp and skin tight cover of Paul McCartney’s Jet divides the room into those who recognise its sing-along chorus (and appreciate the joke) and those still young enough to have absolutely no idea what it is. It does highlight how tight they are as a band, though, and how frightningly talented Will Rees is as a rock guitarist.

The set finishes with another twangy one, Lost in Austin, before they return with rapturously-received crowd-pleasers Half in Love with Elizabeth and Two Doors Down before ending with the uplifting tornado of Alice Springs.

The band clearly enjoyed themselves as much as the crowd, Will hitting the nail on the head by telling us “playing Oxford is like coming home”.

He’s right. Blaine and his dad, backseat band member Henry, did indeed live just a few miles away, in Steventon - but that’s not what he meant. It’s more to do with the intense connection between the band and this very hardcore of fans: people who will drop everything to come and see this superlative, and always surprising, bunch of musicians - even on a cold, rainy night at the fag end of the weekend. And it is all the more glorious for that.

Come back soon.