The moment any of our doe-eyed, wistful indie kids get a sniff of success, they're signing to major labels, providing the soundtrack to TV shows about property improvement, and churning out music-by-numbers in ever blander shades of magnolia. Not so with the doe-eyed, wistful kids of US indie, of whom Pale Young Gentlemen are fine examples.

Consciously or not, Pale Young Gentlemen feel very much like part of a movement spearheaded by Sufjan Stevens: delivering thoughtful, melancholic music played almost entirely on classical instruments. Most tracks are dominated by the interplay between a full string section and acoustic guitars; with one foot in the sensitive indie singer-songwriter camp and another in much older, rootsier traditions.

black forest (tra la la) kicks off with Coal/Ivory, driven by an insistent fingerpicked guitar phrase, underscored by elegant strings and stark, untreated drums. The mix of bareness and beauty is almost post-rock, calling to mind the abrasive charms of Godspeed You Black Emperor! One track in, and I Wasn't Worried shows another face to the album, the muted West Coast melody and Michael Reisenauer's plaintive vocals echoing the first Eels album.

It's a quiet beginning for an album which centres around pretty, mid-tempo tunes. But Pale Young Gentlemen really hit their stride when they take things up a notch or two, as on The Crook Of My Good Arm, which, if there was any justice in the world, would never be off your radio. Using strings to play the lead and bass parts, with other instrumentation acting purely as embellishment, it's an extremely smart, danceable pop tune which just happens to be devoid of any pop conventions.

Here, as on several of the best bits of the album, the band recall the delicate chamber pop of The Magnetic Fields or Beirut. Call me a snob, but I think there's something edifying about listening to clever little tunes played by a miniature orchestra rather than thrashed out on electric instruments.

At times the album veers towards the music of the bandstand or the carnival, as on the hurdy-gurdy of Marvelous Design and Wedding Guest, or on the delicate waltz of There Is A Place? Everywhere, an older, simpler world is conjured up, through the use of these poppified traditional forms, but also through Whitmanesque lyrics drawing heavily on the natural world and the human body.

Raiding the nineteenth century poetic tradition for lyrical inspiration might be a little over-familiar these days (see Sparklehorse through to Shearwater) but it at least acts as an emotional shorthand which the purveyors of pasty UK indie would run a mile from. If Keane sang of "bodies twist and hips crash kissing thighs and inbetween" their mothers would probably disown them.

Let’s not be mistaken: black forest (tra la la) is a thoroughly nice album. It's tuneful, well-written and beautifully played, and throughout there's no getting away from a Coldplay-esque earnestness. But, alongside this, there's plenty to set it head-and-shoulders above most polite indie fare. Within the relatively tight confines of twelve mid-paced, carefully orchestrated tunes, there's a surprising amount of variety, depth and genuine feeling. Pale, and most definitely interesting.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees