As the curtain rose on Datarock at Oxford Art Factory on Thursday night, the band were discovered posing motionless in their trademark red tracksuits and sunnies, frozen in a tableau of self-conscious pretence and pomp.

With their matching outfits and poker-faced pageantry, the boys from Norway could be likened to a Gen-Y Devo. Both are bands who embrace a variety of stylistic and musical identities, and both love messing around with synths whilst wearing the same clothes as one another.

More so than their electro-rock peers such as !!!, The Rapture and Midnight Juggernauts, Datarock know how to combine witty and hip lyrics with crowd-pleasing beats without pushing the pompousness and ostentation to the level where the music sounds flash-in-the-pan and monotonous.

After posturing for a few minutes whilst Fear Of Death played forebodingly in the background, the group opened their set proper with an energetic performance of Give It Up from their latest album, 2009’s Red. From there the band moved sporadically back and forth between Red and their 2005 debut, Datarock Datarock, filling Oxford Art Factory with splashy and strutting disco drums and mischievous guitar licks.

Saxophonist Kjetil Møster was a delight whenever his lips touched his instrument, starting with a humdinger of a sax solo in Dance!. His moments of virtuoso brilliance lent an air of individualistic creative autonomy to the band’s unique brand of uniformed, tightly-regimented anarchy.

Datarock had a convivial and theatrical stage presence, with windmill guitar movements and leaps on and off the stage both frequent fixtures of the night. Both the audience and the gig’s technical crew felt involved and invited into the performance, with a red-shirted roadie being dragged on stage to dance the running man during the opening of Princess (which was, predictably, hilarious). Sex Me Up was a particular highlight, grooving and slinking its way through the audience like some kind of very naughty snake.

The group’s largest hit to date, FaFaFa, was undoubtedly the biggest crowd-pleaser of the evening, the electric and jumping atmosphere exacerbated by Møster crowd-surfing and moshing with the lucky fans at the front of the stage. Computer Camp Love, with its Grease call-and-response structure, was another big win. It was staged inventively and engagingly by the band, whilst the slow and boozy beat of I Used To Dance With My Daddy was the perfect follow-up track, slowing the pace and making the audience sway and sweat.

We were treated to a few new tracks off the band’s upcoming album; Catcher In The Rye, which sounded decidedly like LCD Soundsystem with its cowbell and dominant bass runs, while fellow new track Datarock The Musical features Ramones-esque “oi”s and jagged guitars. As the gig drew to a close, lead singer Fredrik Saroea earnestly let the room know that he loved us all and had loved playing to us, striking up the opening notes of Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes’ lipstick-and-pink-pillow anthem, (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life.

The band was about a quarter of the way through the track when one presumptuous chick decided she’d get up and cut a rug with the band, prompting another fan to join her, and then another; soon around 40 people were crammed onto the small Oxford Art Factory stage, leaping and singing with the band, turning the closing number into a swaying, joined-hands ballad unlike the closing of any gig I’ve ever seen, and leaving me laughing and smiling all the way down Oxford Street.

Datarock knew exactly how to fill up Oxford Art Factory with semi-ironic laughter and snappy dance-punk beats, and managed to end their gig with one of the most heart-warming and bizarre music incidents I’ve ever witnessed.