Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Some bands just weren't born to play arena-sized venues. Sure, you often hear that old cliché where a band on their way down the slippery slope to oblivion might say:_ "we always preferred the college/club/toilet/(insert favoured choice here) circuit anyway"_, but there are some artists who clearly revel in this kind of setting.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club fall neatly into that category. Whilst the propensity of their sound should be enough to send earthquakes through any Gatwick Village-sized arena, it's only in a room this size, in front of 500 or so punters, where it really makes sense.

The previous couple of times that BRMC have played Nottingham they filled out the three-times larger cavern of Rock City, and on each occasion their set meandered in places, becoming a feasible substitute for Mogadon where insomniacs were concerned.

Tonight though there is an urgency about their performance that I've never witnessed before. Whereas before the opening bars of 'Stop' have sounded plodding, tonight they come over ferocious, an appetiser for what the rest of the night holds. Even the normally apprehensive, vacant stares of Peter Hayes and Robert Turner are replaced by knowing smiles and occasional glances of reverie between songs. Okay, so the between-song banter is still kept to a minimum of "Thanks", but the tornado that is 'Six Barrel Shotgun' and the Suzi Quatro-stealing 'Spread Your Love' are insistent anthems that remain lodged in one's cranium a full 24 hours after the show, while 'Salvation' is surely the most beautiful ballad ever written that isn't actually about love.

A couple of new songs are aired for the first time tonight - so new in fact that Turner says they don't have titles yet - which suggest their next album could be a more atmospheric collection than 'Take Them On, On Your Own''s full-on rock and roll fest.

If any further proof was needed that the band look as if they are actually enjoying being here it comes at the end of the evening, with the trio seemingly reluctant to leave the stage, and duly returning to perform a two more songs well after the 11 o'clock curfew. In these kind of surroundings, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are simply in a league of their own, victims of their own success it seems as the little boys lost, who played to 5,000 people at V, were easily transformed into a colossus fit for Goliath this evening.