The Critics: Rock And Pop: Bang a different drum - try a saucepan

The Beta Band Junction, Cambridge Travis Astoria, London Cast Astoria, London

Projected behind The Beta Band is a film of a man in a parrot costume flapping his way around the world. The Band themselves are barely visible in the gloom but for the glow-in-the-dark stripes on their anoraks. Their bespectacled singer, Steve Mason, is honking a toy horn and mumbling a mantra in an American accent (he's Scottish), while the group's other three members sound like an infant class bashing saucepans with wooden spoons. Then the song breaks off and a tape recorder blares out a verse of "The Lambeth Walk". Is this really the most important new pop group in the country?

That's what we've been told. The Band don't release their first album proper, The Beta Band, until tomorrow (their previous three EPs were gathered on one disc last year) and they've already been ranked alongside the momentously influential likes of the Stone Roses and Massive Attack - not just by the press but by such big names as Noel Gallagher. I don't know how helpful this is. It seems harsh to burden any group with the mantle of importance, and the idea that The Beta Band are already significant seems ill-suited to a group who are so irreverent, fun and off-the-wall. Mason's idea of banter is to ask the audience about the local "amenities": "Have you got a swimming pool and that?"

To call the Beta Band important would be to imply that they had a mission. Maybe they do, but you wouldn't think so to listen to them. They give the impression that aiming for power and glory would get in the way of a more worthwhile pursuit: grabbing any object in the room that is capable of making a noise and knocking up brain-scramblingly diverse, psychedelic folk-dub-trip-hop, redolent of Cornershop, the Bonzo Dog Band and the Small Faces' "Lazy Sunday".

As Blur strain to be experimental, they must envy the ease with which The Beta Band do it. But behind all the strangeness there are some catchy, reflective songs. And alongside the whistles and quacking noises, you'll hear skilful gospel piano and rock guitar. Another clue that the Band are cannier craftsmen than they let on is the surreal short films that accompany each song. Unusually for the back projections at a rock concert, these films are entertaining in their own right, particularly one featuring a man in a supermarket loading his shopping trolley with tins of "Sunshine", "Mem- ories" and "Girls".

Without the films, the tracks do go on a bit. If you listened to the new album twice in a row, its endless twists and turns would drive you round the bend. But if you see The Beta Band in concert you'll grin, dance and be in- spired. What could be more important?

The Beta Band's determination to make paper aeroplanes out of the rule book can leave you impatient with other concerts, especially those in which four young men wearing casual clothes stand and play songs on guitar, bass and drums. So it's unfortunate that the other two groups up for review this week are Travis and Cast. First up are Travis, who stood out as a band with great promise after the release of their debut album, 1997's Good Feeling. With the arrival of its follow-up, The Man Who, they still stand out as a band with great promise. They still haven't fulfilled it. Very pretty as the record is, there are a couple too many measured, jangling songs of unspecified misery. It's ironic that the album's most powerful track - a savagely vivid portrait of an abusive father and his forlorn daughter - is "hidden", unlisted, at the end of the record.

In concert, Travis pace themselves more carefully, mixing their tortured ballads with finger-clicking Weillean cabaret tunes and chant-along glam anthems. So as not to take any chances, they add a guest pianist and some cleverly deployed TV screens, too. But their greatest asset is their singer- songwriter, Fran Healy. As well as having the sweet, bright-eyed good looks of Joe McFadden from The Crow Road, Healy has the most engaging personality I've seen on a rock stage in a long time. Putting aside the moment when he tried to persuade the bassist to drop his trousers, he seemed to have the same vulnerable, big-hearted humanity when talking to the audience as he does in such expressions of loneliness and depression as "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" and "Writing To Reach You".

Andy Dunlop, the guitarist, provides a useful counterpoint, pulling feedback from his instrument as he scissor-kicks and staggers across the stage, and generally setting out his stall as the new Bernard Butler. Travis are most often described as a less intense Radiohead, thanks to their stuttering rhythms and Healy's pained but soaring vocals. But the likelihood is that the band will grow into Crowded House territory. Healy's wholesome, folky songwriting and his way with a poppy chorus have a generation-spanning appeal. At a time when every band is expected to conquer the world with their first album or risk being dropped, it's a nice change to watch a band whose best may well be yet to come.

At the same venue two nights later were Cast, whose third album, Magic Hour, is a rockier, riffier revamp of their usual sound: Merseybeat played by a band third below the Beatles on the bill at the Cavern Club, and sung by a glove puppet with sinusitis. On Thursday, they expended no more effort on their concert than was needed to tap their feet in time to the music, but they were harmless and perky enough. In my weaker moments I may have even tapped a foot of my own.

The niggling thing is that when John Power is interviewed he articulates some novel concepts in among his gibberish, so it's frustrating that he settles on the first New Age rhyme that enters his head when he writes his lyrics. As long as his songs keep insisting that if you Free your mind You will find What you hide Deep inside So learn to fly Way up high To the sky ... then Cast will never be anything more than the indie Lighthouse Family.