The Organ

A soundcheck, a soundcheck, someone give this man a soundcheck. PLEASE.

Particularly when that "man" in question is This Et Al mouthpiece Neil Widdop, who spends a large part of his band's set nervously tuning his guitar, staring at his pick and knocking a whole keyboard stack to the floor, almost decapitating the drummer in the process.

And yet, when they do actually get around to knocking out the odd tune their cathartic mix of Muse, Cooper Temple Clause and Aztec Orange Ferdinand** unco-ordinated raucousness louch into one another it feels like a behemoth in the making, particularly the exquisite tones of 'Catscan', which rumbles along at a dead-waking pace and stands head and shoulders above the rest of their output like King Canute's golden pocketwatch.

!forward, Russia! however probably aren't even aware of the word "Stagefright" let alone its definition.

With a skinny, hotwired Jesus lookalike called Tom on vocals whose penchant appears to be for self-mutilation courtesy of microphone leads and Kim Deal's future perfect twin on drums, their Wire-eating blue amphetamine pills (that's Dexy's Midnight Runners** to you and me folks) whilst redefining the age-old concept of verse-chorus-verse structural arrangements into an almost alien lifeform is both enthrallingly calamitous yet positively remarkable at the same time.

And more's the point, every one of their songs is named after a number, so when 'Seven' implores us to "bring back Johnny..." several times and 'Nine' insists we're all "...lost in a sea of conjuncture", it's fair to say that confusion is the new sex for a good 25 minutes at least.

Vancouver quintet The Organ may be playing only their second ever show on these shores, but for the effortless drop-dead f.u. attitude coming off the stage you'd be forgiven for believing they were seasoned veterans.

Mixing 'Seventeen Seconds'-era Cure with the deadpan aura of both The Shop Assistants and The Passions, The Organ offer a more subtle antidote to Interpol's cursive melancholia, and in Katie Sketch, have a vocalist whose delivery ranges from the depths of Morrissey's grandiose self-depreciation society ('It's Time To Go') to Liz Fraser's singer-as-sixth-instrument-actually persona, as the delightful 'Steven Smith' and the funereal epic finale of 'Let The Bells Ring' ably demonstrate.

At the end, Sketch and co. seem quite humbled at the ecstatic response drawn from the sparse crowd, which means they'll be calling for the parademics when Canada's best kept secret become headline news this summer.