The weather's ridiculously hot, the students are away, everyone's penniless after the World Cup's persistent pubbing and it's live eviction night on Big Brother. Just four reasons, there, as to why tonight's show is criminally under-attended.

As for those that did make the effort, what they got for their money was largely a mixed bag of tricks, with one or two pert surprises here and there.

Strangely enough, opening acts "Tom's Band" - aka Tom from Farmyard Records' band - and New World Record seem to draw the biggest audiences of the evening, most probably for logistical rather than musical reasons. The former sound like a less-inspired Belle And Sebastian while the latter plod along the same tiresome route as the Stereophonics and Snow Patrol (of late), their set lasting for what seems like an eternity.

Because of the previous band's marathon-like performance, Metro Riots are only afforded time enough to play a handful of songs, spurring them on in a frenzy of cocksure determination that makes a mockery of the 'Libertine wannabe' comments that have followed them for the last couple of years. Granted, their graveyard-stomping r'n'b isn't entirely unique, but following the previous two bands it feels and sounds like manna from heaven.

Southend's Switches, though, are a different proposition altogether, almost like a personifying case of schizophrenia caught up in a single four-headed body. Most of this is largely down to frontman Matt Bishop (pictured), who comes across all charming and eloquent during the verse'n'chorus exchanges but transforms himself into an axe-wielding maniac during the instrumental solos and codas at the end.

Musically they're a strange beast, with the likes of 'Lay Down The Law' and 'I Think I'm Going Down' sounding like Franz Ferdinand if they'd listened to more Weezer rather than dieted on Orange Juice, while 'Snakes And Ladders' and current single 'Message From Yuz' suggest Bishop and his gang secretly want to rock, alongside their forefathers, like it was Donnington '85, except they haven't quite mastered the stances and the sequences. When they do, Switches could just be your new favourite underground pleasure.