Oceansize

Welsh emo posers are ten-a-penny these days, but *The Blackout *seem to be among the most prominent at the moment. Their music is more boring than a day out with granny at a knitting convention, but they jump all over the place, shouting and crooning at will. Getting Ian Watkins to sing on your EP will not gain you credibility. Quite the opposite, in fact.

While I_ could_ go on and on about The Blackout, there’s not much to say about Receiving End Of Sirens. They’re a whiny American emo band. While you can’t ever see them ever being important to more than a handful of people, they are safe enough. They’re not offensive: you can take it or leave it.

A band that definitely does split opinion all the way from love to hate is Oceansize. Luckily, most people have seen the light and love this band. Playing just four songs in a half-hour set isn’t ambitious for this band – it’s normal. There are no radio-friendly unit shifters involved, just glorious swathes of prog metal-inflected post-rock.

The abundant emo kids don’t really know what to do when confronted by genuinely thought-provoking music and form an ironic circle pit during the Mancunians’ gently turbulent music. When a couple is cradled to the rear of the venue, moved to tears by Oceansize, it’s easy to pity the youthful ignorance displayed in stark contrast elsewhere in the venue.

It is *Fightstar *that everyone is here to see. Fresh from being ‘released’ by Island – they were like a ferocious wild animal, trapped within the confines of a horrible major-label cage – the quartet have focused on their live show and it shows tonight. While the Palais isn’t filled to capacity, those in attendance are willing suitors to the emo-rock in front of them. While the band were probably stroking their chins in casual admiration during their main support’s set, there will be none of that going on now: it’s time for the moshpit to erupt.

With wintry trees adorned with fairy lights in the background and dancers swinging lights or fire or something _(I couldn’t be sure) around their heads, it was almost as if they were trying to distract people from their songs. They need not bother. They burst through much of their debut album, _Grand Unification, with all the bluster and guile of a band that has practised and played and knows exactly what to do. All the fans’ favourites come out to play, but somebody ought to tell them that covering _'My Own Summer' _really poorly the day after one of the finest Deftones shows for a long while is a very bad idea.

Fightstar are great at what they do, and while the whole Busted thing obviously is and will continue to be an albatross around their nimble necks as long as writers keep mentioning it in reviews, they are quite definitely a band in their own right. And a good one at that.