Few cover bands could sell out the Prince on a Sunday night. But few cover bands have such a distinctive style and sound – though the less generous may call it a gimmick. Either way, playing new wave, punk and post punk songs as cabaret lounge bossa nova has built a strong following for French group Nouvelle Vague. Perhaps the punters just want to hear their favourite songs from their youth in a style more suited to their now fragile or refined tastes. Whatever the reason, the sold out sign is on the door and the bar’s doing a healthy trade in chardonnay as the audience pours in for Nouvelle Vague.

With the unusual live combination of DJ and pedal steel guitarplayer, Solal mixes his own music with classic country sounds to begin the evening’s entertainment. After reinventing tango sounds with the use of samples, beats and breaks, Gotan Project’s Philippe Cohen Solal, has turned his attentions to the countrified sounds of Nashville. Recording his latest record The Moonshine Sessions in Tennessee with help from Bucky Baxter, guitar sideman for Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and Bob Dylan, Solal has created an unexpected fusion of down home country with downbeat electronics. It may seem an odd turn, but as Zero 7’s glorious remix of alt-country act Lambchop’s gospel tinged tune Up With People proved, it can lead to spectacular results.

Neil Young’s Heart of Gold rises up as Solal loops the opening acoustic cords, before introducing Young’s distinctively reedy vocals. Folsom Prison Blues is successfully re-envisioned as a hazy piece of Elvis’ Hawaii period. Though when Solal pushes the beats to the foreground with Skeewiff mix of Man of Constant Sorrow from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack the wafting beauty of Filip Wauters pedal steel is lost behind the thud. Selections from the Doors and the Blues Brothers soundtrack also featured in a set that may have struggled in Bob’s Country Bunker – where they play both kinds of music ‘country and western’ – but serves as a fitting entrée to the night’s main course.

On record there’s a certain dinner party vibe to Nouvelle Vague’s music – unobtrusive, yet conversation starting – and many in the crowd take a little while to adjust to the fact that there is actually a live band on stage. Some five songs into the headline set, after the band have played Blue Monday and danced together as they sing Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself, the murmuring quietens, though a stray voice actually asks “is this the band?”. Once it’s established that there actually is a live band playing, the crowd become more responsive.

Though their records have employed a number of singers including Camille, who achieved success on her own with her Le Fil record, on this tour Nouvelle Vague use just two singers to cover all their covers. Their two chanteuses divide the material between darker and cutesier songs. With a faintly gothic cabaret vibe and look one singer handles songs such as Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Dead and the Cramps’ Human Fly – with a kazoo solo – while her giggling counterpart takes the led on more jokey punk covers including the Sex Pistols God Save the Queen and the Dead Kennedy’s Too Drunk To Fuck. The latter comes with a repeat chaser as the suddenly tipsy singer realises she has forgotten to get the crowd to sing along. With a far slinkier vocal than Jello Biafra ever had the two takes on Too Drunk are easy crowd pleasers with the crowd as eager to sing that naughty F-word as the far younger punters at an underage punk gig.

Both singers vamp and camp it up, flirting with their band and audience and indulging in choreographed dance routines that mirror the lyrics to the songs like Guns of Brixton (“When they kick out your front door/How you gonna come?/With your hands on your head?/Or on the trigger of your gun?”) It’s an oddly childish image for this classic song about race riots, but the then these songs of protest and anarchy have become the musical wallpaper of a past era. How many Rage Against the Machine fans are really concerned with Zac de la Rocha’s lyrics? They’re just songs and kitsch acoustic versions of Killing in the Name are surely looming on the horizon.

Despite the potential for the band to be overwhelmed by the novelty, they’re able to overcome that limitation on stage with their infectious enthusiasm. Their set rose to a close with their jaunty take on the Specials Friday Night, Saturday Morning before ending with a tender version of Love Will Tear Us Apart. For desert they return with a brief encore, including In a Manner of Speaking, but the main course was more than satisfying. The albums are a take-away meal: a quick sugary snack and easily dismissed by critics. But the live Nouvelle Vague experience is a richly flavoured event that will be fondly recalled at dinner parties for months to come.