Club Fandango

Being perennial early birds would be the catalyst for most bands to say "enough is enough" and just walk out the back door. It's to all those present's benefit that Quartershade don't merely rise to the challenge, they actually set a masterful standard for the other three acts to follow. If your bag consists of blustering, chest-beating anthems with sparser riffs than the square area of Epsom Downs then Quartershade are for you. Remember, even U2 had to start somewhere...

Sadly, Seretone don't grasp the gauntlet set by their predecessors. Instead, they seem to take all of the main bits from some of the biggest unit shifters of the day (The Killers, Kasabian, Primal Scream) and throw them all together to make...not an awful lot to be honest. Anyone for the StereoKaisers? I thought not. And another thing, only 65*days of static (marginally) and Chico from the X Factor can get away with playing along to a backing track, so extra points deducted for that aspect too.

Derby combo Beats Capri have been hovering around the precipice of greatness for a while now. Like all good bands, their live show is so much better than their recorded output that, put the two side by side, one could be forgiven for thinking it's two different ensembles entirely.

Certainly as far as their image goes, Beats Capri tick all the right boxes, while their songs tread the same austere path as Kaito except the tunes are left intact rather than skewered. 'City Of Hawks' and 'About Last Night' push the boat out like a less cheese-coated Chalets and when Joanne O'Neill sings "I've got you in my sight, take a hold of me tonight" during 'Me Your Girl', every single bloke in the room stands to attention in more ways than one.

What do you get if you throw 'Parallel Lines', 'Dog Man Star' and 'Different Class' into a cement mixer?

After tonight, that's an easy one to answer as the Hot Puppies don't just join them together and paper over the cracks, they make you forget that those three aforementioned records had ever existed in the first place.

Singer Becky Newman may be a dead ringer for Nichola Roberts from Girls Aloud, but that's strictly where any similarity ends. She doesn't do sugar coated pop, instead choosing to vex and perplex the audience in equal measures with charming tales of 'The Drowsing Nymph' and 'The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful' over a wall of sound that sprays the word "GLAMOROUS" in bright yellow Sharpie ink over yesterday's newspaper headlines.

Standing out from the crowd though is gorgeous set closer 'How Come You Don't Hold Me No More', a skyscraping proto-ballad that recalls the derelict pleasures of Suede's 'Asphalt World' and Pulp's 'Something Changed' simultaneously, and more importantly should have teenage girls and housewives choking back the tears every time it's played on the radio this time next year. Because mark my words, in twelve months time, everyone will have heard of the Hot Puppies.