TORONTO - A strange thing happened in the middle of a song at the Dandy Warhols' Opera House show Saturday night. Singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor Taylor suddenly started shouting out chord changes, then stopped the band to argue with keyboardist Zia McCabe for several minutes about the way they should proceed. Eventually they got back on track, but the fact that the interruption didn't really affect the momentum of the show was significant. Truth is, there wasn't ever much momentum to speak of in the band's low-spirited, lackadaisical performance.

The Dandy Warhols -- McCabe, guitarist Peter Holmstrom, drummer Brent de Boer and Taylor Taylor, who doubled his last name a few years ago for no apparent reason -- emerged from Portland, Oregon, in the mid-'90s. Over five albums their loose sound has shifted from indie rock to synthy Britpop to spacey psychedelic guitar rock and back again, with their newest one, Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars, hovering somewhere between the Velvet Underground and Spiritualized.

The Dandys have traditionally experienced more success in Europe than in North America. And last year they were the subjects of the documentary Dig!, which followed them and semi-friendly rivals The Brian Jonestown Massacre on their separate paths to fame and fortune. The Dandys came off as the more successful but less talented of the two bands, and ever since then they've been fighting a reputation for being poseurs and careerists.

But if so, their timing is off -- the long jams on Odditorium stand apart from the short sharp punk-funk that's been in vogue all year.

Taylor Taylor seems to have musical hooks coming out his ears, but he can't always put them together with any real spark or energy. The band didn't help matters by seeming half asleep for most of Saturday night's show, as well as taking bathroom and/or smoke breaks and keeping stage patter to a minimum.

A backdrop of smoke, coloured lights and film projections of solarized nudes and old black and white films set a groovy psychedelic mood, but the songs melded into each other, with similar tempos, chugging guitar style and horn parts, and close to incomprehensible lyrics.

The set list reached as far back as the band's first album, 1995's Dandys Rule, OK, but everything from Genius, Minnesoter, Godless, Boys Better and Solid right through to the new album's Smoke It and The New Country had the same low energy and sluggish pace.

Interestingly, a number of the band's songs -- including Bohemian Like You, Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth and All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey -- lampoon their own hipster obsessions, like drugs, indie cred and fame. Unfortunately, they just seem too caught up in it all to make us laugh about it.