My feelings on The Decemberists have changed over time. I used to associate them with the sort of American teenage hipster crowd, all drinking skinny milky lattés in Starbucks and nibbling at giant muffins and enthusing over MySpace and wearing stripy socks and owning iBooks. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that I’ve grown to really like the band, so much so that I went to see them at the Zodiac last night.

I don’t remember ever making an effort to like the band, and yet I find myself owning two of their albums and listening to 16 Military Wives on a near-obsessive basis. I have no idea how this happened, but this is just where we are now. If you don’t know their music, I suggest starting with the track mentioned just up there and then listening to other tracks on their (sigh) MySpace page.

Their songs tend to be narratives, folky and poppy and with a bit of a nautical theme at times. They all seem like nice people — quite clearly a bunch of geeks, but the good kind, not the sweaty, CaféPress-clad kind — and gave good banter. John Moen demonstrated his ability to juggle with two things and even managed to make that seem impressive, while Jenny Conlee’s inability to throw a tambourine across the stage with accuracy only made her all the more endearing.

The Oxford Decemberist audience was a bit older than I was expecting, with a lot of people in their mid-thirties — the sort of people that get articles written in the Guardian about them, after they spend £50 a week on new CDs and wear designer jeans despite being, technically, old people. Perhaps they, like me, had all come to the venue expecting a crowd of liberal teenage emo girls, but it was not to be.

It’s possible that the young hipsters were all moshing at the front, but I tend to avoid that area in case I get pushed over by some of the rough boys. Loitering at the back with the one guy who, at every gig, gets drunk, raises one arm, and roars incoherently over the music until security removes him, I did find myself accidentally swaying in time with a blonde girl wearing black-rimmed glasses, but she turned out to have a boyfriend. You know the sort; an inattentive young man who’s had a slight paunch ever since he left university who takes his girlfriend for granted, and while she dances alone he stands there with his feet planted firmly on the floor, a pint of crap lager in his hand, looking like he’d rather be watching the football.

He’s probably wearing a rugby shirt, and also wears a jacket of cheap polyester despite the heat of the venue. He’ll try and leave before the encore and complain when she insists on staying. When they go home together he’ll urinate straight into the water in the toilet so that everyone in the neighbouring houses can hear what he’s doing, and then he’ll have sex, except it’ll all be about him and it’ll only last for ten minutes. He probably has an Xbox. God, what an arsehole.