The Cribs / Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong / Does It Offend You, Yeah? / The Ting Tings

So the 'Forgone Conclusion Tour' rolls around again, packed to bursting with the bands NME will be spending the next twelve months relentlessly hyping up, in an effort to ensure that this time next year they can fill pages with stories about the 'unknowns' they found to populate the bill. On paper it is an interesting looking lineup, and thankfully they have dispensed with the frankly laughable 'Rock vs Rave' abortion that was last year's tour, so we get to see what should be the best of the current crop of up and coming bands.

Rule one in the 'How To Put A Gig On' is surely 'Make sure the doors are open long before the first band starts. Sadly, the Academy door staff haven't read the book, and so this seemingly obvious rule passed them by. The result being that your intrepid reviewer was stood in a queue in the cold while The Ting Tings did their stuff onstage. Ah well, according to tonight's promoters, they're going to be massive, so there will be plenty more chances to see them.

After fighting my way to the bar, and ensuring that I was far enough away from the ketamine addled twelve year olds who seemed intent on hitting A&E before the night was out, I'm all set to enjoy a cracking set from hotly tipped dance outfit Does It Offend You, Yeah?, and what a set it is. The hard edged, bass driven rhythms are clearly designed to appeal to those whose idea of good night out involves smiling once in a while, and if you can't enjoy this, you must be dead. The beats laid down compel you to dance, and the fantastically named Morgan Quaintance is a master at understated crowd control. The Daft Punk-esque 'Lets Make Out' defines the set, and on this showing DIOYY could easily be the logical successor to the French dance maestros.

By this point, the kids on ket are going mental, and you could have stacked a big heap of shit on stage, and they would have danced to it. This is good news for Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, who, to be incredibly lenient on them, are distinctly average, at best.

The highlight of the set is the soon to be overplayed 'Lucio Starts Fires', which to be fair, is a blindingly good single. The only problem is that nothing else they play tonight even comes close to this one bright spark. Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong are indie-by-numbers, which is to say that they aren't actually bad, as such, they are just exactly the same as so many other bands out there, that it is impossible to get excited by them. This is all well and good if they aspire to be Razorlight, but really, there must be something more to aim for?

Somehow, however, the fates are smiling on us, and we make it through the almost terminal boredom, and come out on the other side. Our reward is one of the most genuinely exciting bands to be playing in the UK right now. The Cribs' take on intelligent, self-aware punk is outstanding, and how they have managed to stay underground for so long is a mystery. The Wakefield trio hit the ground running tonight with 'Don't You Wanna Be Relevant' and the pace hardly lets up for the criminally short hour that they are on stage.

With three albums to cherry pick from, tonight's set is nothing but inspired. 'Our Bovine Public' appears early in the set, and with lyrics such as "never exist without being generic, you have to impress our bovine public" it is impossible not to connect it with the previous band, and also with the tonight's easily pleased crowd. 'Hey Scenesters' is phenomenal, with Gary Jarman screaming the refrain like a man possessed, and recent single 'Mans Needs' gets the entire room moving as one.

Eschewing the traditional encore, The Cribs play right through to the curfew. Since their inception they have been a band that defies convention, and tonight is no different. As the final strains of their signature rant against contrived scene culture 'The Wrong Way To Be' scream out of his amp, Ryan Jarman dives headlong into the crowd, summing up the point of The Cribs - there is no distance between them and their fans, just a shared love of the sort of music which excites on a base, unexplainable level.

FUTURE GIGS

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