If you have to spend an entire day holed up in a music venue then the Cargo is one of the better places to be. Good bottled ale, ace food, a sizable beer garden with seating and a decent sound and stage, if it wasn’t for the excessive number of Nathan Barley-esq idiots strutting around it really would be the dog's danglies.

Showing up at half two we’ve already missed a couple of acts so Komakino catch us relatively cold. About halfway through we realise we’ve seen them before. Last time they had elements of Joy Division (as their name would suggest) and rather a lot of… Placebo (sickbag for bed 17, please matron). They’re evolving slowly and added to those two they now seem to have picked up an occasional element of Bloc Party’s sharp chirruping guitar along with Idlewild-esq tunefulness. Overall, they’re ok but still lack killer tunes.

Fans of Kate seem like the sort of indie band the marketing man at Mega Music Corporation might have invented after snorting too much charlie in the bogs of the bars that litter this neck of the woods. Keyboards are in right now and signpost the influence of the Killers and Keane whilst the anthemic rock choruses of a poor man’s U2 prepare them for the stadiums they will surely be headlining (where do Accrington Stanley play again?). It’s pop with a capital “P” but dreary with a capital “D”.

Two bands in and I’m already crying out for something a bit different. Fortunately next up are my old South London neighbours, Ludes. Forsaking their bassist and drummer for this gig and augmented by a novice percussionist, they’re ramshackle at the best of times and today they’re like a three wheeled trolley. Their usual ska and blues sound is lost and they have a salsa feel about them. And yet, as usual somehow the scamps carry the caper off. It’s not all Ricky Martin on rum and coke though as one spiffing number, which may be called Rubber Band, has a nifty 60s Stones riff whilst another is basically a rebadged skiffle version of the Who’s Magic Bus. A fizzy Latino treat with or without a lime in the top, in fact.

I’m not sure what 10000 Things would make of Shoreditch and its inhabitants. From Leeds, their laddish saucy tales are thinly disguised (Back to Mine and Eating’s Not Cheating) although they have toned down much of the crude between track banter since last time I saw them. They ask if there are any journalists in the venue (they’d recently been given 1 out of 10 in an NME review) and unsurprisingly there’s not a peep from the crowd. Musically they flip between pop (think Zenyatta Mondatta era Police) and heavy riffed rock and I still can’t work out whether I love or hate them.

We then have a flurry of familiar faces, with a handful of local bands. The Rocks are regulars at London urchin pop festivals and in Celeste they have one marvellous bouncy Blondie meets the Adverts classic moment. Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah are all shouty spiky powerpop, veering from Sham 69 in yer face political polemic (BNP) to Libertines wig shaking catchiness. The line “Jimmy White’s on crack again” is still buzzing around my head 4 days later. Metro Riots need no introduction to regular SoundsXP readers. Cage rattling blues from the Deep South (London); dragged up from the New Cross swamplands where they’d been recreated from DNA scraped off Robert Johnson’s mummified knob, they’re raw and unsettling, frontman Damo like Jack White crossed with a wounded wolf. Fun it ain’t, awe inspiring it certainly is.

Last up, for me anyway (I’ve got a restrictive Sunday night Network South East timetable to adhere to), are the Rifles. Now, much as I’ve enjoyed the two singles, I wasn’t expecting a great deal from these Jam-inspired mods and when I realised that one of the band members, wearing a union jack badged pork pie hat, was also almost old enough to be my dad, the phrase “ropey cash-in” flashed through my mind. Luckily they have a decent collection of hook happy songs to call on, none of which would have looked out of place on Modern World or Setting sons. Alas, in a metaphorical cloud of Vespa fumes they were off too quickly. And so was I. So, literally at the end of the day, these festivals are a bit like your mum coming back from Woolies with a bag of Pic n Mix for you. There’s inevitably elements of disappointment jumbled in with the excitement and maybe the variety isn’t what it could be but fortunately in this case, we found we’d got a good few raspberry ruffles and only a couple of fizzy flying saucers…

What's your view? Comment on the Forum

Other discussions on the SoundsXP forums right now...

Spread the word: Email this article

THOSE DANCING DAYS - Live

LES SAVVY FAV - Interview

DUKE SPECIAL - Interview

THE DIRTBOMBS - Live

HOLY F*CK - Live

BRAKES - Live

JENS LEKMAN - Live

SPIRITUALIZED - Live

SLOW DOWN TALLAHASSEE - Live

THE DODOS - Interview