Bomb Factory

Some bills can never quite live up to expectation. It’s the ones that you least expect anything from that usually do, whether lovingly hand-picked or cobbled together at the last minute. For both formulae to work (and it does if it annoys the audience into saying ‘Well I preferred the first band etc’ at the bar) they should always feature radically opposed bands that somehow manage not to jar. Anything uniform just dulls the senses and makes you wish you’d stayed at home screaming at the radiator to stop making clanging sounds.

Bomb Factory like to scream. At least, their singer Jack does, and screams with substance, a sort of cross between Janov’s PS therapy and being pissed off with Saturday telly, a much needed catharsis in bucketloads. Spindly staccato rhythms with sinister edges make their songs alert, urgent and plain arsey. Agit-prop in post July 7 times, with a song about Stockwell tube station, is a much needed reminder that the Magic Numbers aren’t the answer.

NeatPeople are, no puns intended, just that. And nice. That’s surely a bizarre coincidence, you say? They are also the happiest most contented band ever to climb onto the stage and happily interact with themselves and the audience without losing any of their breezing spring-day guitar pop feeling. It's like Jonathan Richman** fronting Kingmaker if they’d been any good and had had far better childhoods. A ringing guitar here, a happy fluid left-handed bassline there, and an embarrassment of melodies to sugar up the most ardent cynic. The contrast between first and second band couldn’t be more obvious, a bit like being given Belgian chocolates after losing a tooth in a pub fight. It's proof that ‘pop’ needn’t be a dirty word.