The Mars VoltaULU, London

Live music is all about the spectacle. Let’s be honest here, when it comes down to it, as long as the band sounds alright, all we actually want is to be entertained. We’re not here to appreciate the finer points of a diminished chord, we’re here because we want the adrenaline kick, we want to feel those endorphins tearing through our system. We’re here because we want to be surprised, because we want to feel alive.

Which is just as well, because right now I’ve got absolutely no idea what’s happening onstage. It’s all a complete blur. Omar is flagellating himself with his guitar. There’s a tank of a man jumping on his keyboard. The bassist hasn’t stopped spinning round for the entire set. Somewhere in the midst of the staccato rhythms, hidden beneath Cedric’s pained yelps as he hurls himself around, there may even be a song. It may be called ‘Cut That City’, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The Mars Volta are like watching chaos theory unravelling. They’re like the Make Up having an epileptic fit, or the frantic garage punk of the MC5 terrorising a space-rock jazz quintet, kind of rama-lama-Sun-Ra-ra if you will. But then, I don’t care if you won’t. The Mars Volta certainly don’t care if you won’t. They’re not playing for you. If they were, they would never have split up At The Drive-In, and you wouldn’t be running for the bar with a scared look on your face. Fuck doing it for the kids – Omar and Cedric are quite obviously doing this for themselves.

Normally that would be a crime. It’s just not punk rock, is it? But incredibly, the Mars Volta get away with every excess imaginable. As uncompromising as they may have become, they’re still performers. While there is a very definite chance that they’ll stick their head up their arse and get their afro caught in their pubic hair, there’s never going to be any risk of the Mars Volta being boring.

They may not be so much At The Drive-In as at the drive-through spaz-jazz gymnastics team avant-prog wank spectacle, but at least it’s the spectacle that we had been hoping for.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of DeadFleece & Firkin, Bristol

Following a minor diversion back in Texas that may lead to the boys being better known by their trail of rednecks, the …Trail Of Dead are on a mission. That mission is to fuck shit up by embarking on a tour of duty; destruction and trouble making that will leave many of their contemporaries looking like limp-wristed acoustic guitar-hugging lightweights.

While there may well be a scarcity of recognisable tunes or melody on display here, what the …Trail Of Dead lack in subtlety they more than make up for in pure rock n’ roll exuberance. In their singer, and part-time drummer, Conrad Keely, they possess a true star, a man determined to play the game like a good ’un, whether that involves throwing himself around on top of the amps, or spouting random shit at the audience as Jason Reece looks on, unconvinced by his admissions, “I want to finish telling them my thought. I’ve not taken any ketamine tonight”.

Whatever he says, every Trail of Dead song seems to have been raised on adrenaline and force-fed amphetamines from an early age. They rush past like a barrage of white-noise terrorism, as ‘Mistakes And Regrets’ pile-drives into ‘Prince With A Thousand Enemies’, before ‘Totally Natural’ finds itself rudely usurped by ‘Richter Scale Madness’. Often the only distinction between songs is who’s singing and who’s behind the drum kit, as Conrad and Jason routinely switch places, each eager for the opportunity to exact more abuse on a different instrument.

As ‘A Perfect Teenhood’ nears it’s tumultuous climax, the whole-scale trashing of equipment begins with an impetuous vigour, though it appears the men in black and blue are a little fussy about who gets to touch their gear. An overly enthusiastic onlooker mistakenly decides to save bassist Neil Busch the trouble of pushing over his own amp, and swiftly finds himself on the painful end of a pair of the finest Texan boots, as drums and guitars crash to the stage all around him. No matter how clichéd it may all sound, the …Trail Of Dead are here to save rock n’ roll, so you may as well stick around to watch the spectacle unfold.

Idlewild

You remember the old days. The days when you had to slog your way around the country, slowly building a fan base, gradually adding to your sales, before finally getting the breakthrough and getting played on Radio 1, and then maybe, just maybe, being asked to appear on to Top of the Pops. You know the way it was, the way it should be, back in the days before Top of the Pops became such a blatant marketing tool used to peddle any old trash that the record label’s would have trouble shifting without that extra bit of media attention. Well, for Idlewild, that how it still is. While every Tom, Dick and fucking Blink 182 gets pushed onto TFI Friday in the time it takes to say ‘oh, Chris, you’re great, here’s some more money’, instead of paying their bribes; and let’s be honest, just appearing on TFI and repressing the urge to smash the smug fucker in the face and not urinate on his motley collection of sycophants that he routinely wheels out for a chat practically counts as a bribe, they’ve been paying their dues; so their recent burst of television coverage must be seen as something of a triumph, not only for themselves but for music in general.

Compared to a number of bands around at the moment, Idlewild’s Top of the Pops appearance was a long time coming. It seems now that bands are getting pushed onto TV before they’re ready for a record deal, let alone such large-scale national exposure, while you had to wait two years. “With ‘When I Argue I See Shapes’ going top 20, we really should have had a bit more television”, suggests bassist Bob Fairfoull. “Things like TFI, Jools Holland and Top of the Pops, we really should have got a wee while ago”.

Did you feel justified in finally getting there? “We’ve had singles that have charted with piss all television”, he says indignantly, “but I think it was about time we got these programmes”. How did you find doing Top of the Pops? “Top of the Pops is a bit strange”, he says, “everything seems to be centred around the audience. They tell the audience exactly where to stand and exactly how many seconds they’re supposed to clap, and if somebody claps out of time you have to do the whole song again”.

Was it odd being on there as a guitar band when so much of the content is now more typically radio-friendly dance music? “Before we went on they had the audience listening to ‘Song 2’ for five minutes”, laughs Bob, “so that they could teach themselves to dance properly to rock music”.

When it came to recording ‘100 Broken Windows’, Idlewild made the unusual decision to work with two different producers, US underground genius Bob Weston, and former Manic Street Preachers producer Dave Eringa. What were the reasons for working with two producers, especially two that are so different from each other? “We’d always wanted to work with Bob. We really admire his work”, explains Bob, “he’s recorded albums with a lot of our favourite bands, and being in Shellac …basically the guy’s a bit of a genius, a kind of god-like character in a way”. “Dave Eringa was kind of a more practical choice”, interjects vocalist Roddy Woomble. “Although we recorded good stuff with Bob Weston, we couldn’t have recorded the whole album with him, Dave kind of focussed it“.

Was it a conscious effort to make it more accessible and commercial? “No, we realised we couldn’t do a whole album with Bob Weston”, Roddy carries on, “it wouldn’t have made sense to anyone, us as well. We needed someone to gel it together”. “It wasn’t so much commercial”, confirms Bob, “it’s just a whole album with Bob …I don’t think the label would have liked it”.

At the time there were a number of rumours going round that there was a great deal of conflict between yourselves and the label. Was the decision to work with Dave Eringa as well as Bob Weston influenced by this at all? “Not really. First we did a session with Bob in London, and it was more our fault than anyone else’s, we weren’t properly focussed,” Bob tries to further clarify the situation. “We didn’t know what it was we were trying to achieve and it didn’t work. Food said it hadn’t worked; we thought about it and they were right. It was nothing to do with Bob. They gave us ample opportunity to work with Bob again. It wasn’t so much a conflict as trial and error”.

Rumours about the supposed conflict had gone so far as to suggest that you’d been dropped by Food, and that Deceptive were going to release the album instead. “Food aren’t in the habit of dropping bands”, sighs Roddy. “Even Jesus Jones and Shampoo are still signed to Food”. “You get these rumours”, adds Bob, “I heard just last week that we were getting dropped last August, but they’re not going to fucking do that if they’re putting out a single in October are they? It’s just bollocks, you get these ridiculous stories”. He continues, laughing again, “it’s like, I’m gay for Christ’s sake …apparently”.

Despite having only been around for a couple of years, Idlewild have already become something of a father figure to other bands, regularly taking unsigned bands out with them for their first taste of national exposure. Seafood’s seemingly never-ending haul around the country started as support to Idlewild, while, more recently, the likes of San Lorenzo and the Starries have been given the opportunity to win new fans outside of their home towns. Is there an intention on your behalf to choose bands with a relatively low media profile for support slots? “Yeah, pretty much”, agrees Bob. “Basically we’ve got a lot of really good friends who are in really good bands, and we believe that they deserve an opportunity. A lot of bands did us favours when we had nothing, and we’re just basically returning the favour”. How far have you thought about taking your patronage of smaller bands? Have you ever considered putting on a larger event, like an all dayer to push them further still? “We tried to do a big gig in Scotland this year”, Roddy shrugs his shoulders, “but it wasn’t very well attended. We’re not popular enough”. Tortoise are already lined up for next years All Tomorrow’s Parties, and Shellac are supposed to have asked for the one after, so maybe you should put your offer in for 2003 now. The grin returns to Roddy’s face. “But we’re not cool enough to get asked to do that”.

And that seems to be the crux of Idlewild’s biggest problem. They seem to be revered and reviled in equal measure in Britain. While some see them as the accessible face of a resurgent underground, others are all too happy to dismiss them as a bunch of undeserving chancers, to discard them for being too pop, not being hardcore enough, and view them as no more credible than the Stereophonics, and it seems that there’s little they can do about it at the moment. Their recent excursion to America has further highlighted this discrepancy. “Over in America we’ve got credible underground status, Bob Weston had some difficulty understanding that we weren’t an underground cool band in Britain, that we’re commercial sell-outs”, explains Bob. “He just didn’t understand it, but that’s the way that some people see it”.

Does it bother you that you’re not always taken so seriously here? Roddy seems unfazed, “there’s no such thing as selling out”. Given that the attitude towards you seems different in America, is it important to you that you’re successful over there? “I suppose so, It’s one of the biggest places in the world so it is important to do well over there”, says Bob. “We’ve only done six or seven shows on the east coast, it was just basically us saying hello”. “Obviously we want to play over there and get a fan-base”, adds Roddy, “but there’s people in the mid-west who haven’t heard of the Beatles. We’ve just to go over there and see what we can do”.

So that’s that for now then. They’ve finally found their way onto our television screens, and are happy to be there, even if it does involve sitting around listening to ‘Song 2’ all day. Half of the rumours you here about them aren’t true, and they couldn’t give a damn what you think of them anyway. For now, it’s back to the festivals, and some time in the near future, America will point their way and beckon once more. And who knows, in their own way, they may even get to be bigger than the Beatles yet.

The Make UpTJ’s, Newport

Pity poor Mick Jagger. Imagine the sense of loss and despair he felt when he last settled down to flick through the old photo-albums. There was Keith sharing a smoke with Brian, there’s Marianne popping down the shops for a Mars Bar, but wait a moment, where was he? Why had his body disappeared from all the pictures? And where had it gone?

If only the gnarled and wrinkled old philanderer had had the presence of mind to trek all the way to Newport for the evening, he would have found the answer. For there, standing on the shoulders of the cool kids down the front, was Mick’s adolescent body, jiving about as if he had somehow relinquished all mortal control over his own body. Picture the scene as Ian Svenonius, purveyor of the finest Gospel Yeh-Yeh sound, glances out over the audience, and meets Mick’s petrified gaze, before throwing his new-found form across the stage, stuffing the microphone down his gullet and treating us to another his rabid chimpanzee impersonations.

In any other situation, Ian would resemble no more than your eccentric, alcoholic uncle popping round to interfere with the kids, the cat, and the goldfish, but tonight, the Make Up are everything they have every dreamt of being – James Brown fronting the MC5, the Black Panthers following the doctrines of Mao Tse-tung, international terrorists directed by Malcolm McLaren – and the pretensions are swept aside by the intensity and passion of their rhythm’n’blues soul revue.

Fortunately for the devoted following, the Make Up have had the foresight to come up with the music to match the rhetoric, and they now sound as sharp as they look in their matching uniforms. The taut guitars and growling bass provide the perfect foil for Ian’s sermonising vocals, as he prowls through the crowd, coaxing backing vocals from his loyal followers, while the black-magic blues of ‘Save Yourself’ implores you to be his Doctor Frankenstein, and ‘Born On The Floor’ raises serious doubts about this man’s childhood and parental upbringing.

Forget Kevin Rowland and his big-girl’s blouse, forget the new soul rebels, the Make Up are the Nu-Soul Communists, and Ian Svenonius is king funky-monkey, and as ‘C’mon Let’s Spawn’ so eloquently states, he wants to a big fish in our small pond, so let me hear you say yeh, before he’s institutionalised by the CIA.

McLusky, Yeah Yeah YeahsHighbury Garage, London

We’ve all done it. You spend months going on about how good a band is. You drag all your mates to see them, and then they’re shit. Last time I saw these two bands they were terrible. I was embarrassed. My friends never wanted to see them again. Fuck, I was lucky that my friends were even willing to speak to me again.

First off were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Last week’s New York kids supreme, and when I first saw them, they were fucking appalling. They were little more than an art-school strop, all ripped tights, temper tantrums and electro-shock hair, knackered sound and a bad Altered Images impression. In short, they were so bad there was no conceivable reason that they could ever have had any good press. Thank fuck that this time is different.

They still sound like Altered Images, but now they’re Altered Images having a fight with Mazzy Star in a seedy punk club. No, really. I’m not making this shit up. OK, so maybe there’s a touch of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion swagger as well, but that’s your lot. However, as Karen O howls her way through the primal scream therapy of ‘Art Star’, it’s clear that second time around, they really are worthy of the hype. Still not sure why Karen O is being hailed as such a sex symbol though; I’ve shat more attractive foreign objects.

And from the tortured look on McLusky bassist Jon Chapple’s face, I wouldn’t like to say that he isn’t excreting something large and painful right now. But no, that’s just the everyday strain of being in McLusky that’s doing that. You give so much that sometimes it’s going to hurt. Other times, it might snap completely, and they could be left sounding like a shambolic mess of fluffed songs, retching and misguided anti-London diatribe. At least that’s what happened last time. And it went out live on xfm. So it’s just as well that this time they’re back on form. They’re tight and taut, and when ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’ drops, it sounds like an explosion onstage. It’s messy. The crowd is still reeling when Falko takes a cheese-grater to his vocal chords for ‘Collagen Rock’. Right now, McLusky really are the fucking bomb, and as they put it so succinctly themselves, the world loves them and is their bitch.

Les Savy FavThe Comedy Pub, Bristol

The show started with a balding man in a hockey shirt giving out plastic flowers to members of the crowd, but now he appears to have other things on his mind. Right now, this balding, and it must be said, rather odd looking man in a hockey shirt is bouncing his way through the crowd on a chair back to the spot where, only moments before, he had left a mic stand hanging precariously from the ceiling before returning to the stage for his seat so he could sit in the crowd and sing while watching his band lurching around. That plan having been well and truly scuppered by such irrelevancies as physics and gravity, the audience are then invited to dance on the chair, while Tim Harrington, for it is he, clambers atop of his amp to address his public, “I want you all to turn to your neighbour and kiss them, boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, open mouthed. What’s wrong with you, you all a bit shy in Bristol or something?”

Welcome then, to the live spectacular that is Les Savy Fav, contemporaries of the Make Up, but somewhat lacking the refined elegance and sophistication that is generally suggested by such a comparison. What we’re faced with is nearer to the Blonde Redhead having a fight with the Birthday Party and losing, or the Jesus Lizard if David Yow had grown out of the worrying habit of exposing his rectal cavity to the audience between songs.

As far as the songs go, it’s pretty shambolic from start to finish. From the looping beats and monotone French narration of ‘Intro’, to the jerky rhythms of ‘New Teen Anthem’ and ‘Hide Me From Next February’, everything is played at a such a frenetic pace that the songs merge together into one coalescent whole, full of staccato guitars and frantic drumming, as Tim Harrington runs through his cabaret act.

In lesser hands, this would have descended into a quagmire of fumbled songs and embarrassed looks, but not only are Les Savy Fav up to the challenge, they carry it off with such style and dignity, they leave you wondering why everyone can’t manage to be this compelling and entertaining.

Seafood

We meet Seafood at the beginning of their first full national headline tour, on the very brink of fame and fortune, lurking around the very fringes of civilisation (well, Cardiff to be precise). Kevin Hendrick (bass / vocals) stumbles in first, apologising for being late after getting lost in town, and is soon joined by guitarist Charles MacLoed, leaving David Line (vocals / guitar) and drummer Caroline Banks perusing the local music shops in anticipation of the guitar abuse that is bound to occur on a regular basis over the next couple of weeks. Having just been record shopping, Kevin’s not too happy with a certain retailer, “I’ve just been to HMV, they’ve made a mistake on the little cards in the racks, and the single is listed as ‘Bent’. Seafood do not release records called ‘Bent’”.

It seems that as far as Wales is concerned, Seafood are determined to make their presence felt at every possible level, despite their attempts to pass off their recent verbal assault on Newport’s latest saviours. “That wasn’t about Terris, if anything that was an attack on the NME, which is quite weird as we were quite grateful that they gave us a piece. They gave us our first ever feature, and here we are telling them how shit they are,” explains Kevin. For a moment you’re tempted to believe him, but he’s not finished, “I’ve never liked the idea of a fad band. Hopefully they’ll prove us wrong and be a good band, but I heard a song of theirs and I didn’t like it.” Fighting talk, surely, but are you up for the challenge, do you have the courage of your convictions? “I’m actually quite worried because we’ve got a day off in Glasgow, and Terris are playing on that Saturday. We’re hooking up with Idlewild, and they’re saying we’ll go and see Terris, I think they’d beat us up.”

Anyway, enough of such nonsense, in case you haven’t been paying attention, it’s still only two years since the gloriously skewed ‘Scorch Comfort’ single crept out on Fierce Panda, only to initiate a media frenzy of slightly more realistic proportions, even if Seafood did manage to kill off their hype before it ever really got going. “We put our first single out and it got loads of attention, it got A-listed on xfm, got some Radio 1 play, and all these record companies just started chasing us. We only had about four songs, and were really a shambles. These people that came to see us at one gig were just putting the money back in their pockets because we couldn’t even remember one of our songs, we just finished halfway through and walked off.”

In that time, Seafood have gone from scaring off A&R men in dingy north London dives, galloped around Britain with the Llama Farmers and Idlewild, and found themselves playing the CMJ festival in America, though according to Kevin, “it was more of an experience just for us to go out there and play America, but in reality it wasn’t really much different to playing a half-full gig in London.” Oh well, back to the long hard slogs around the country to build up a fan-base then. “We are going out to America again this year in the spring, a mini-tour around the east coast, as we’ve got a record being put out by a Boston label, two of our early singles, ‘Porchlight’ and ‘Scorch Comfort’ back to back, so we’re going to play New York, Boston and Philadelphia.”

Until then, it looks like once more around dear old Blighty, even if the prognosis is more hopeful this time. “I think people perhaps read the reviews and overall have a pretty positive view, the press build it up and say Sonic Youth, and all that stuff, but I think people are like ‘well, they're in the press quite a lot, we’ll go and see what they're like’ and hopefully we’ll pick a few fans that way” says Charles. “We’re getting to forge our own identity now,” adds Kevin, “and these people who are coming to see us are seeing us for the first time, it’s our chance to impress them.”

How have the tours changed as you moved from supporting other people to headlining in your own right? “We’re a proper band now,” suggests Kevin, “I was dying for the chance to headline, but it’s been really cool for us as it’s allowed us to develop in the quiet, and now we can take it on as a headlining band and be pompous.” Do you think that people have already formed an opinion of you, based on the recent press, without perhaps having actually heard you? “The way the album has been received by the press has been cool. It’s been pretty positive, had good reviews. They do pick up on the Sonic Youth and all that, but at the moment that's fine, I just think that’s good company. This is our first album, I’d be more concerned if we do our second album and we were getting those reviews. We love pop songs; we’ve got a pop mentality. As much as we like Thurston Moore blowing a trumpet out his arse, we also like full on pop, we’ve got that sensibility about us. We will write a pop song, I’m telling you, it’s in us, it’s just we’re not going to force it out, we don’t know exactly how to go about it, but its working well like that, I don’t know how else to do it.”

No matter what the outcome of the tour, whether it ends in fame and fortune, or hospitalisation at the hands of a slightly irate Newport kid whose mouth is presently bigger than his band, Seafood appear to have a pretty good idea of how things should be going right now, and what they need to do in order to take that next step forward, without compromising their music or work ethic. “We’re not going to be a pin up band, and that’s cool, I like that. I just want to really feature in some peoples lives, be quite an important band”.

As far as Kevin is concerned, this seems to be Seafood’s main goal. “That’s why, if we were offered Top of the Pops then we’d do it. If they want to take our brand of music and put it on Top of the Pops, then that’s cool, but we’re not going to go and write a Stereophonics by numbers song just to get on”.

It seems inevitable that the tour will bring with it countless reviews all throwing those same few references about once more, but just in case any of you are feeling too scared to venture out and discover the wonder of Seafood for yourselves, then let Kevin dispel any fears you may have that they’re intent on grandiose destruction of tunes and equipment every evening, and are actually quite nice boys and girls after all; “last night we went a bit mental at the end. I apologised for the mess and I said I’d tidy it up, that’s not very rock and roll is it?”

McLuskyBeatbox, Swansea

Having recently been responsible for the aural irritants known as Terris and Mohobishopi, South Wales is probably the last place you’d be expecting to find anyone worthy of being classed as the latest next big thing, but try not to let the geography put you off. While the best their local contemporaries can muster is empty rhetoric and unfulfilled promises, McLusky are an altogether different proposition, a snarling combination of punk aggression and hardcore ferocity, prowling the stage like caged animals spitting their anger and vehemence into the faces of their captors. They may look like the last thing you’d want to meet in a dark alleyway late at night, or in the middle of the park on a bright summer’s day for that matter, but sometimes salvation can come from the least likely places.

It’s there in the abrasive ‘Joy’ as bassist Jon Chapple contorts into new shapes behind his mic, as Andy Falkous screams his way through ‘White Liberal On White Liberal Action’, all raw attrition and white-knuckle guitars. It’s probably only a matter of time before some hack claims that this anger and attitude is the direct result of their environment, that McLusky’s power and passion is fuelled by the frustration of South Wales living, but McLusky are so essential that any such eulogising is rendered irrelevant by their very existence, because who gives a fuck about the origins of this noise when it’s this pure and vibrant.

As the final riposte of ‘Who You Know’ is hurled across the room, you’re left reeling from the impact, overwhelmed by the feeling that you’ve just been cut to the bone, as their hooks slice effortlessly through sinew and muscle to leave you completely exposed and breathless. Hardcore, it would appear, has come to settle the score.

Appleseed Cast, Cursive, TerrashimaDublin Castle, London

Terrashima are the worst band I’ve seen for years, if not ever. They’re so bad I think I want to fight them. I don’t really know why, there’s just something about this particular combination of conceit and ineptitude that riles me. They’re punk, 1979 style. You know, punk as in ‘we’re fast, we shout, we serve no purpose in life other than to piss people off and no one has ever told us that we really shouldn’t bother’ kind of way. The worst way. Come back Blink182, all is forgiven. The guitarist’s t-shirt reads ‘live fast, die young’; the sooner the fucking better as far as I’m concerned.

So thank fuck for Cursive and the Appleseed Cast then. There’s none of this arrogant shit from them. Cursive are never gonna come round here acting like they own the place. Cursive don’t need to tell us good they think they are. We can tell how good Cursive are for ourselves. You can see it in the way that singer Tim Kasher stands there looking like Roddy Woomble’s older brother, wearing his broken heart on his sleeve. That may sound like a cliché, and who knows, maybe it is, but you should take every preconception you’ve ever had about an emo band, and leave them at the door. Cursive are emotive. They sing about the ups and downs of life. You can tell by the look in their eyes that they mean it, man.

On paper, there’s nothing to distinguish them from any other emo band, unless you count Gretta Cohn’s cello. But it’s what you feel in your heart and your head that counts. And deep inside, as ‘Sink To The Beat’ leaves you grinning like an idiot, you know that Cursive are nothing short of a revelation.

Such a revelation in fact, that the Appleseed Cast have trouble following them. Not that’s there anything wrong with Appleseed. It’s just that you haven’t had time to regain your composure before half of their set has washed over you. It’s all very pleasant. It’s all very loud. Maybe that’s the problem. Caught between the PA and the monitors, all I can notice is the immense volume. I hear guitars surging together. I can see Christopher Crisci singing. I can’t hear him, but he’s singing anyway. All the songs sound the same. I know they probably aren’t, it’s just that to my untrained ear, being unfamiliar with the band, I wouldn’t recognise anything if you played me the albums straight after the gig. By the time they encore with ‘Fishing In The Sky’ and ‘Marigold & Patchwork’, it all makes sense, but it’s almost too late. They’re post-hardcore kids turned shoe-gazers. The only comparsion that makes it through the haze is Juno. This is a good thing. It’s just I can only give so much of myself in one night, and tonight I’ve already given my heart to Cursive.

Querelle, PsychoSunThe Metro, London

We all know what an Italian is supposed to look like. Elegant, sharply dressed, with an effortless touch of style. Basically, they’re so much fucking fitter and better dressed than the rest of us, especially if we happen to be sartorially challenged and British, an all too common combination.

At least that’s what I thought up until the moment that PsychoSun rolled on stage. Where do spiky moustaches, shit hair or crap shirts stretched over rotund stomachs come into the equation? What the fuck is going on? I must be seeing things.

In that case, I must be hearing things as well. They probably think they’re playing drop-dead cool garage rock. I imagine they lay awake at night wishing they were Jon Spencer or Judah Bauer. Unfortunately all those sleepless nights appears to have affected their ability to write songs. This sounds far too much like the early 90’s retro-punk shit that spawned Britpop. We don’t need to go through that again. Please make them stop. I don’t want to have nightmares. I need order in my life. I need my national stereotypes to be reconfirmed; else I fear I shall go mad.

I need to see Querelle. They’re the complete antithesis of PsychoSun. They’re the epitome of what I wanted an Italian band to be. They’re a male singer, and a couple of girls on bass and drums. They’re stunning. Their clothes are perfect. I’m staring at them, transfixed, lost in my lust. The entire crowd is. You could cut the sexual tension in the room with a knife.

And then they start to play. I’d heard them compared to Sonic Youth and the Lapse, but I’d never actually heard them. My expectations were high. And somehow Querelle manage to exceed them. They do sound like the Lapse and Sonic Youth, and the Blonde Redhead as well. They sound like three of my favourite bands, but without being derivative. I’m thinking that maybe they’re perfect. In my head I’m already stalking them.

It’s all my friend can do to stop herself from gawping at the singer. His hair is shagging in his eyes, and his guitar is smashing against his skinny hips as he violently wrenches feedback from the tortured instrument. The bassist has got that nonchalant, impassive, ‘I’m only a smile away from being beautiful’ look. The only reason I’m not staring at her is that I’ve just fallen in love with the drummer. She’s screaming at her drums, writhing around as if she’s climaxing behind her kit.

As the aching guitar and thundering drums crash into a cacophonous finale, I realist that I never want to be without Querelle again. I want to rush out and buy their records. The only problem is that they haven’t even made any yet.

The StrokesLouisiana, Bristol

Despite having only having been in the public eye for a month, there’s no doubting that the Strokes could have easily filled a venue twice the size of the Louisiana. In the new rock friendly musical climate, they are perhaps the first true post At The Drive-In band, where the music is no longer considered enough, where people have finally woken up the fact that they’re supposed to be entertaining us, that no matter how sharp you sound, you are duty bound to look even sharper. In fact, while half the country is still struggling to come to terms with the last big thing, the next one is already here.

While American rock is gradually winning its fight against the manufactured bands in the charts, the Strokes look and sound as if they have just stepped out of the Factory, styled by Andy Warhol and steeped in the glamour of late 70’s New York art-rock. Within the space of just one song, they’ve rejected 20 years worth of music, caught up in a sound that originated in CBGBs and was epitomised by the likes of Television and the Modern Lovers, Devo and the Dead Boys.

Not only that, the Strokes look the part as well. Julian Casablancas curls himself around the mike, equal parts David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Bassist Nikolai Fraiture contents himself with modelling the perfect bob, calmly watching as Albert Hammond Jr., looking like Abel Ferrera in ‘Driller Killer’, delivers staccato bursts of guitar while jerking around the stage as if he’s been licking batteries. For all the retrograde influences, you can’t knock their style, their passion, or their brilliance. The Strokes are the sound of the Richard Hell’s blank generation coming of a modern age, and you’d be a fool not to celebrate that.

Billy Mahonie, Jullander, ReynoldsSilver Rocket, Upstairs at the Garage

Welcome to post-rock central. Not since shoegazing have so many anonymous musicians turned their heads to the ground, and refused to smile or speak for the entertainment of so few. But that’s not to say that it’s all wibbling arse and pretentious guitar pyrotechnics around here. Fortunately the cream of post-rock are gathered here today to prove that some of them are able to play for the crowd’s pleasure as well as their own.

Though maybe someone needs to tell that to Essex boys Reynolds. A most contrary of beasts at the best of times, tonight they’ve blatantly gone and forgotten that not writing lyrics doesn’t mean that you can completely ignore such trivialities as melody or tunes, and if you’re going to pretend to reject all notions of traditional song writing, you really should drop the cock-rock antics as well. But apparently Chris Summerlin thinks that he needs runs through his repertoire of AC/DC impressions while wanking over his guitar like a frustrated adolescent, even if no one else would agree with him.

Fortunately Berlin’s Jullander aren’t prone to similar acts of public self-debasement, and are more than content to hunker down over their instruments and bash out a grinding motorik instead. Their tenacious guitars lock together so perfectly on ‘Blende’ that you barely even realise you haven’t got the slightest idea what they’re singing about.

But no matter how valiant Jullander may be, there’s no way that they’re going to match the majesty of the Billy Mahonie live experience. In fact, Mahonie are practically unassailable right now, as they build on the promise of their recent ‘What Becomes Before’ album, rapidly banish all thoughts of a certain bunch of balding, belligerent Scotsmen. Along with New York’s Paul Newman, Mahonie have succeeded in pushing the post-rock format into new ground, as they add folk and free jazz to their already eclectic oeuvre. Billy Mahonie are offer all the proof necessary that post-rock can be concise and enthralling, and as a dramatic encore of ‘Düsseldorf’ shows, they’re more than capable of post-rocking out with the best of them.

Soeza, BuckyPull The Strings, The Comedy Pub, Bristol

Def Leppard? One-armed drummer? Bollocks to that, Bucky have got a one-handed drummer called Jeff, and he plays his floor-tom with his stump. How fucking rock’n’roll do you want him to be?

You want the British Moldy Peaches? You got it. You want the Violent Femmes to go rockabilly under the watchful eye of the Reverend Horton Heat? You want fries with that? How about a wisecracking duo with a penchant for lo-fi garage-rock and songs about families who build conservatories with their dead children’s trust funds? You want that to eat-in or to go? No matter which way you look at them, Bucky make their own peculiar little corner of the underground a nicer place to be, with a great line in wit and surreal bullshit to boot, as well as presenting the best advertisement for disabilities in rock this side of a wheelchair-bound theremin player.

And just when you’re thinking to yourself ‘how the fuck is anyone going to top that’, Soeza saunter onto the stage, fresh from a week touring around France, and with all credit to Bucky, they sound completely fucking untouchable tonight. Like your favourite hardcore luminaries chewing down on healthy doses of jazz and soul, Soeza cram their widescreen soundscapes into perfectly executed four minute doses of awe-inspiring brilliance which leave you wondering how the likes of Fugazi have remained so creatively limited over the last decade, as Bristol’s finest purveyors of post-hardcore grooves pull out all the stops.

No matter which way you turn, their songs are loaded with hooks just waiting to drag you into their world. The bass and twin drum backing hold down the beats while the guitars bring such a surging momentum that Aaron Dewey and Daniel Cornfield’s horns rise up and leave you captivated by their breathless eloquence, unable to escape their clutches. Within minutes, you’re utterly lost in their rhythms, and it’s like love at first sight. Not that nice, cuddly lovey-dovey bollocks, but the full-blown desire verging on obsession, daytimes stalking, and night-times hiding in the bushes, stealing pants from the washing-line, headfuck lust that you can’t help but give in to. It’s time to give in to their charms, cos once you’ve let them into your world, you just ain’t gonna be able to live without Soeza, baby, so you’d better get used to it.

Belle & SebastianBrixton Academy

Adrian met Michela on the tube at Oxford Circus underground station. He was quite surprised. He was late and had been expecting to find her already waiting for him in Brixton. But no, she got on the same carriage as him and came and sat down next to him. She was very excited to be going to see Belle & Sebastian.

By the time that Adrian and Michela got to the venue the support band had already finished. Adrian didn’t even know who the support band had been. When he later found out that it had been Life Without Buildings he was very disappointed to have missed them. In fact, Belle & Sebastian were already halfway through their opening song when Adrian and Michela arrived so they tiptoed around the back of the audience so that they would not disturb the band.

Adrian thought that the songs that Belle & Sebastian played were all very nice. He wished that he could say something more complimentary about them, but to tell the truth, he was only half-concentrating on the band. Belle & Sebastian were boring him a bit, especially when they were playing songs from their last two albums. Adrian realised that he hasn’t really listened to these records very much. He couldn’t even tell you what many of the more recent songs were called. He recognised one of them, one with a lyric that said “she met another blind kid at a fancy dress, it was the best sex she ever had”. Adrian thought this was funny, because it was very unlikely that anyone in Belle and Sebastian had ever had sex. Someone nearby said that the song was called ‘The Model’. Michela turned to Adrian to say that she hadn’t known what the song was called either, but that she didn’t care, because she was very happy to be there. She was dancing along to every song. Adrian admired her energy.

After about half an hour, Stuart Murdoch told the audience a story about how he used to watch Blue Peter, and how they would often have a steel band on the programme. Stuart said that it would be nice to see a steel band again. Then a steel band come onstage and played Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’. Adrian didn’t think that was a coincidence. He thought that maybe this had been planned in advance.

After the steel band left, Belle & Sebastian came back on stage and played some of their better songs, including ‘Dog On Wheels’ and ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’. Adrian wondered if Belle & Sebastian actually knew what an arab strap was, or if they just thought that using it in a song title made them sound more grown-up. He also wondered why they were playing so quietly all the time. How was anyone supposed to hear them? Adrian thought that maybe Belle & Sebastian fans were too fey and weak to hear loud music without getting a nose-bleed, and that Belle & Sebastian were being so quiet because didn’t want to make a mess in the hall.

But when they came encored with a cover of the Only Ones’ ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’, Belle & Sebastian were playing so loudly that everyone had to stop talking. Adrian thought that maybe they had just forgotten to turn the PA on earlier.

After the show, Michela decided that Belle & Sebastian were now one of her favourite bands. Adrian hadn’t been so impressed. He thought that they could have tried a lot harder, and that they weren’t being very nice to all of those people who had spent so much money to go and watch the show. In fact, Adrian thought that is was rude of Belle & Sebastian to have put on such a lacklustre performance. But maybe he was just disappointed that they hadn’t played ‘She’s Losing It’ or ‘Seeing Other People’. These were his favourite Belle & Sebastian songs. While Adrian walked Michela home, she said how much she had enjoyed the show. Adrian was not so enthusiastic, but nonetheless he had still had quite an enjoyable evening.

NME Premier TourCardiff UniversityJanuary 2000

You know when some scholar with far too much time for introspective contemplation claimed that if you sat an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters for infinite length of time, that eventually one of them would replicate the complete works of Shakespeare? Well, if you got one sloth, broke both of its arms, gave it a guitar with only three strings, and played it the latest Travis album, it will have written Coldplay’s entire set after about four minutes, and that includes the time that’s needed to work out that it isn’t a particularly good idea to eat the fretboard.

Contemplating why anyone needs another asinine, atrophied take on Radiohead and REM would stretch the most creative imagination, so quite how Coldplay’s obviously stunted ingenuity has allowed them to decide that they need to be that band must have taken a transcendental leap akin to that which lead to the discovery of fire. So for now, we can only hope that Coldplay and fire find themselves closely associated more often in the near future.

In these post-modern, post-rock, post-apocalypse times (depending on which crack-pot religious cult you joined in a drunken stupor on New Year’s Eve), it’s comforting to find a band so determined to recreate their vision of the future now, and with all the subtlety of a mass-murdering doctor. When Campag Velocet follow tonight’s limp-wristed, inept openers with a performance of such force and commitment, proceedings are instantly injected with a much-needed touch of class and an even more necessary kick in the arse.

Looking like some bizarre new form of urban hermit, Pete Voss strides about the stage safe in the knowledge that, come armageddon, it’s only going to be him and the cockroaches left breathing, as Campag Velocet do a Burroughs style cut-up job with the Happy Mondays back catalogue, a tattered copy of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and the Situationist International manifesto before ‘Bon Chic Bon Genre’ and ‘Drencrom Velocet Synthemesc’ batter our bodies with an intensity generally only felt by victims of biological warfare.

Remember that film ‘Big’, when Tom Hanks finds himself trapped in the body of a school-kid and gets into all manner of japes far to hilarious to go into here. Well, Jacques Lu Cont is your dad trapped in the body of a toddler overwhelmed with delight at having managed to wipe it’s arse unaided for the first time, at a Blue Peter karaoke party.

Les Rhythmes Digitales look like the techno Beastie Boys, jump about like B’Witched on hot coals, but after about four songs, become as annoying as a happy-hardcore Rod, Jane and Freddie, as the lip-syncing, funk bass, and incessant cheekiness begin to leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and long-repressed memories of Don Johnson, designer stubble, and shoulder pads the size of Dallas begin to resurface along with a timely reminder that the 80’s were in fact, completely crap, until the initial image of a cabaret Add N To (X) fades away, leaving Jacques and Jo’s crazy, madcap antics resembling a pair of stick insects having an epileptic fit.

You only need to look at Michael Head to know that Shack have lived hard lives; with so many years struggling in the shadows of their peers; spiralling through drug abuse, critical acclaim and commercial failure. You know that he’s sincere by the way that the sweat beads glisten on his forehead, you can tell that he’s kept his integrity because he plays an acoustic guitar, and you know he’s shit because he’s got his mouth open and words are coming out.

There are many reasons that a band can see out their career wallowing in self-piteous obscurity, and occasionally, just occasionally, it’s because they’re nothing but yet another fucking exponent of classic songwriting played by real musicians with real instruments, people with no fucking concept of the possibilities of guitar music, people so hung up on the past that they consider ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band’ to be the best album of all time, people who run away scared at the slightest suggestion of innovative song-writing, people who only buy three fucking records a year (one for Christmas, one for their birthday, and one as a special little treat when they get three numbers on the lottery), people who would be quite content to watch Cast play down their local pub every fucking Thursday night until the next fucking millennium. It’s just unfortunate that this time round, they’re actually trying to fool us into believing that this insipid, retrogressive, whining pub-rock drivel should be conceived as fiery and passionate tales of an underdog with a story that needs to be heard, or that it is any more relevant to our lives than the glue-sniffing, piss-head busker propped up outside the local train station.

Shack? Shack of shit more like.