The New Mendicants @ International Anthony Burgess Foundation, 13 July

Supergroups are a risky business. For every Gutter Twins-style success, there’s a Broken Bells – a set of mouthwatering ingredients that just taste bland when you smoosh 'em all together. But what of The New Mendicants? Two of power-pop’s most beloved exponents working together? We’ve been burned before. Luckily, Joe Pernice’s collaboration with Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake marries the best qualities of their parent bands, being all bittersweet introspection and adorably melodic pop. It’s a veritable triumph of warmth and simplicity.

Both gents are on fine form tonight, interspersing their material with delightfully witty banter – and the intimacy of the acoustic performance is enhanced by the cosiness of the Burgess Foundation (“We’re both big Charlatans fans,” says Blake drily). Pernice handles the majority of lead vocals, with new songs like Follow You Down and Sarasota sounding like forgotten classics from the Pernice Brothers’ vault, while his bandmate pours sugar on top with typically swoony harmonies, making for a concoction that’s sweet without being saccharine.

An album has been recorded, they inform us, but they still alternate the new stuff with greatest hits and curios from their back catalogues – Pernice’s country-tinged fan favourite Bum Leg remains magnificently melancholic, while a rousing Everything Flows serves up a healthy reminder of the quality inherent in the Fanclub’s arsenal.

OK, so The New Mendicants aren’t offering anything new: 40-something singer-songwriters rarely make it on to the front pages of magazines, and a collaboration between two unfashionably classicist tunesmiths isn’t about to change that. What they do provide, though, is clear chemistry – a shared understanding that sometimes the most basic songs are the ones that truly tug at the heart-strings. It’s just a matter of doing it well. And really, do you need your groups to be any more super than that? [Will Fitzpatrick]