Seafood

Indie music is supposed to be dead, what with the fallen indie idol Lamacq more inclined to play the Wu-Tang Clan and Papa Roach than Belle and Sebastian and Kings of Convenience, with the former indie bible the NME feeling in love with the American hip-hop and the svengali-cultivated neo-feminist hypocrisy of the likes of Destiny's Child and their R&B contemporaries. Even Camber Sands is more likely to play host to dance acts for All Tomorrow's Parties from a genre soon to be known as 'post-Warp'.

In the face of this it may seem that the indie-fan is a dying breed and guitars will soon be confined purely to museums but no, the indie-ethic is very much alive and kicking and one of the few remaining thorns in the side of the trend is here tonight under the name Fierce Panda.

In the last ten years Fierce Panda has launched the careers of countless great bands and Embrace. They're also evidence that, contrary to NME rhetoric, indie is not so out of touch that it should be led into a field and shot.

What should be led into a field and shot however is Kaito's cliché ridden pitiful tuneless-shouty-girl-punk-by-numbers-shit which is so utterly lame it really ought to be put out of its misery. Kaito?! Now, lookie here. Tunes are fucking brilliant. Tunes make the world go round. They give the milkman something to whistle, the average-person something to sing on the way to work and kids something to dance to and, face it, docile Twist-like Elastica tribute bands don't get booked much for school discos do they ?

What's more, tunes are a pre-requisite for good pop music but you've clearly never heard any good pop music in your life, have you?

Easyworld quite apparently have. This is their first visit to Newcastle since they pleasantly suprised everyone on the King Adora tour and tonight, not only do they prove that they are far far closer to being the finished article than some may have at first believed, they show the notions that they are 'the new JJ72' to be as bizarre as goattte bearing, baseball cap wearing, javelin wielding nuns wrestling in gravy. They are Ash without the hefty bank balance, they are New Found Glory performing Beach Boys cover versions. In fact they could even be two Mark Greaney clones replacing the girls in the Human League.

Their illustrious brilliance is apparent from the utterly-beautiful mandolin led 'Junkies and Whores' through to the snotty electrified-punk of 'You Make Me Want To Drink Bleach' and the devotion that is shown by two girls down the front who know all the words and have blown all their money on a train-ticket from Glasgow is the sort of dedication that they will soon see on a much larger scale. The A&R scout who isn't willing to sell their house to finance a signing of Easyworld is so cretinous they are a danger to themselves.

Seafood are rather a suprise. Never before has a band looked so nervous as they lurked backstage and never has a band shuffled onstage looking this much as if they'd like the ground to open and swallow them up.

Seafood believe that beneath the façade of Smelly-Boy Nu Folk and braindead Ibizan dance music, the heart of primitive rock and roll still beats and feedback drenched set-opener 'Cloaking' will throttle you until you nod in agreement. The entire set is absolutely fucking volcanic and even the old-skool hits such as 'This is Not An Exit' feel every different when in every sense it feels as if Seafood are teetering on the edge of brilliance. Their catacylsmic cacophony of Sonic Youth's feedback, Sebadoh's riffs and the Pixies loud-quiet dynamism is hardly anything new but since when did that matter?

The fact that Seafood are so underrated is criminal and only you can change that and I implore you to do so. Otherwise I'll shoot this cute fluffy kitten (not pictured).