Jetplane LandingThe Metro, London

We all know that Saturday night television is where it’s at. You’ve got to get yourself a prime time slot between the full time football results and Blind Date if you want to be a star. And given the chart success of Hear’Say and the bastard offspring of Pop Idols, it’s clear that the popular music format is the only way forward.

Jetplane Landing know that they need to grab both the pre-pub crowd and the terminally depressed Tottenham fans, and they’ve come up with a plan: a bunch of nice lads playing songs in the style of their favourite bands, while Matthew Kelly presides over the show with his steely gaze and scary smile.

In an effort not the disturb the children, bearing in mind that this is only a pilot, Matthew Kelly has been given the night off so it’s down to the contestants to provide all of the entertainment. In the cunt Kelly’s absence, you can tell that Andrew Ferris and brothers Jamie and Raife Burchell are up to the job as they saunter on stage, pick up their instruments and announce “tonight, Metro, we’re going to be Braid, Unwound, Jimmy Eat World, Shellac, Van Pelt and the Lapse”.

And you know what, they’re really are all six bands at the same time. They’ve got the duelling guitar and bass, the pounding drums, the slightly nasal vocal delivery and such a mighty wall of sound that the PA gives up halfway through the night. They’ve got the songs about heartbreak, even if the screams of “fuck you and your opposite sex” on ‘What The Argument Has Changed’ do give a rather bitter variation of the theme. They’ve got their put downs ready for the inevitable confrontation when Pete Waterman and Nigel Lythgoe berate them for not having a dance routine, as Jamie snarls “silence the critics, I may have found the answer” during ‘This Is Not Revolution Rock’, before not breaking into an Irish jig.

After the show, it’s clear that the pilot has been a glorious success. Primetime ITV here we come. The title of the program? Given the emo nature of the music it’s going to have to be called Tears In Their Eyes.

Ikara ColtThe Metro, London

The manual of popular journalism says that it’s about time for the Ikara Colt backlash to start. They’ve had twelve months of glowing press, released a couple of incendiary singles, and have got their first frenzied national tour out of the way. In other words, they’ve been built up enough for everyone to notice when they fall. They’ve had their fun, so now it’s supposed to be time for the jaded hacks of the music press to have theirs.

Only it doesn’t look like it’ll be quite that easy to knock them down. While most bands walk into the trap of their own accord by becoming complacent and listless as the world falls at their feet, Ikara Colt are refusing to play by anyone’s rules other than their own. They’re still sticking to a thirty-minute set, but while this is a necessity for many people, they’ve justified much of the hype by dropping half of the old material for new songs that are every bit as compelling. They still open with the barbed adrenaline rush of ‘Escalate’ and rip though ‘Sink Venice’ with fervour, but now the brooding menace and funereal pace of ‘City of Glass’ adds another dimension to the set and proves that their usual high-speed tempo isn’t employed to hide a lack of ability.

That’s not to say that everything is going their way. If you listen closely enough you’ll notice that Clare Ingram isn’t having the best night of her career on guitar and Dominic Young keeps racing ahead of everyone else on the drums. But Paul Resende’s voice seems to be getting stronger with every gig, so there’s not really much cause for complaint just because they screw up the occasional tempo change. They’re still a near-perfect amalgam of hardcore ethics and riot grrl intensity, so we may as well throw away the manual, accept defeat and applaud another damn fine night.

The Starries, BaxxterFlapper & Firkin, Birmingham

It may be a cliché but there’s no denying that one particular type of musician is always going to turn to out to be the most unreliable and troublesome person in a band, so it’s no surprise that tonight’s gig sees both the loss of Baxxter’s drummer and the continued initiation of the Starries’ new sticksman. Following the rather controversial and possibly unnecessary sacking of Twist’s Lisa Lavery, Baxxter’s very own Kelly Southern finds herself moving on to fill their newly acquired bass shaped whole, leaving Greg Smith and Russ Griffiths out for blood, as they scream and hurl their way through their own nasty brand of grunge, before trashing their guitars and storming off in an alcoholic haze.

Since the equally unexpected departure of the Starries’ Stephen Kelly last year, it seems that a new sense of purpose has fallen upon his former band mates, as they continue to break in replacement drummer Greg Ikin. Recent times have seen the Starries hailed as Birmingham’s champions of rock’n’roll, a vicious edged hardcore band with the self-belief to fuck shit up and make one hell of a racket while the rest of the Midlands was going mod-crazy, a dedication to their calling which left members of the audience limping away with torn ligaments after their comeback show, the damage caused by the crowd’s stage invasion during last year’s Arts Festival still evident.

Maybe it’s just the effects of cheap alcohol that’s left them looking so determined, poised on the edge of the stage, as guitarists Richard Burke and Geordie trade barbed wire riffs and barked vocals, mistreating their voices as much as their instruments, caught up in their own new found resolve, making a mockery of anyone that thought they couldn’t keep going after having lost a founding member. In fact, the change in personnel seems to have been even more beneficial than their tour support with like-minded noiseniks Idlewild ever was. ‘Water Flow’ makes like Hüsker Dü manhandling Imperial Teen’s perfect pop hooks, while the Fierce Panda endorsed ‘Feature 85’ has gained an urgency that it had previously failed to capture.

Following the recent success of American bands like At The Drive-In and Queens Of The Stone Age, it seems that the British public may have finally woken from their Britpop induced slumber and with everything falling back into place so neatly for this particular bunch of inebriated Brummies, local off-licences and promoters should be warned, for the Starries are more than ready to unleash their discordant brand of hardcore havoc on unsuspecting gig goers once again.