It’s been a big week for the band tipped as Oxford’s brightest new talents.

They’ve released their debut album, played Glastonbury Festival and have now jetted off to the States to begin a coast-to-coast tour. But, talking to Glass Animals’ frontman Dave Bayley beforehand, there was one thing more important than all of that — a hometown show in his local pub.

When you bear in mind his local is the Jericho Tavern, and that the show is a launch party for that album, Zaba (released on Adele and Primal Scream producer Paul Epworth’s Wolf Tone label), it makes a lot more sense.

The last time Dave and bandmates, and former St Edward’s schoolmates, Drew MacFarlane, Edmund Irwin-Singer and Joe Seaward, were here it was at the invitation of Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood, who helped propel them to new heights — including selling-out London’s Southbank Centre for a headline show as part of James Lavelle’s Meltdown. And to the crowd lucky enough to snap up tickets, this show felt like a curious combination of backroom gig, private celebration and special happening.

They’re a modest and self-effacing bunch, Glass Animals, not given to stage theatrics. There was little in the way of banter, the audience content to listen and nod along to a gloriously uplifting set which channelled hip-hop, trip-hop and cinematic electro-pop. The band themselves struggle to sum up their sound, Bayley’s best definition being “hip-hop holding a pineapple”. And, to be fair, that’s not a bad description.

However, there’s more to it than that, with echoes of Radiohead, Alt-J and even fellow Jericho band Foals.

Bayley’s poetic lyrics are irresistibly woosy, his dreamy delivery backed by slow-building beats; songs gradually evolving into gorgeous symphonies of synth, guitar, percussion and gentle electronica.

The whole set hung together beautifully, with murmurs of recognition for previous EP release Psylla, new single Pools and closer Gooey — a tune so delightfully composed, one can feel it tickling the back of the brain.

The gig was advertised has having sold out, yet was curiously far from packed, numbers presumably limited to allow for the set to be filmed from the back. That film, when it is released, will serve as an historic record of a band on the cusp. If my predictions are correct, the footage will one day be regarded with the same excitement now reserved for Radiohead’s seminal video for Creep, filmed at the Zodiac.

The talent, charm and connections are all there — how far they choose to take it is up to them alone.