NME of thestage

reviewed the DatsunsHHHthe polyphonic spreeHHHinterpolHHHHthe thrillsHHBarrowland, glasgow

TRADITIONALLY, the annual NME Awards touring package delivers a four-band bill that - while certainly capturing a breathless zeitgeist - never offers an early peek at a band who go on to conquer the world. The last time they got it right was with those nice university- educated young men with an apparent hotline to universal emotion Coldplay (languishing fourth on the bill a couple of years ago). Usually it's just an opportunity for bands already over-hyped in the gushing pages of the NME to burn just a little brighter before they inevitably implode.

Dublin's The Thrills don't seem to be too concerned with their tricky opening slot, but then they spent most of last year chilling in sun-drenched San Francisco. The relocation certainly suits their breezy, laid-back country-rock - an inoffensive sound that borrows as much as from Neil Young as The Beach Boys - but they look a little too much like The Strokes with Starsailor haircuts. And when the band themselves don't seem that bothered about the music they're creating, why should we?

There are more questionable haircuts on show with New York scenesters Interpol, but the sound is far more vital; a weird, wired refraction of 1980s British doom-pop, which sees them routinely compared to Joy Division. Vocalist Paul Banks does have a gruffness similar to Ian Curtis, but there's more to them than mere copyists. Their fiercely intelligent and sonically dense approach would be a little stiff if it wasn't for the passion with which they power their diamond-hard songs. Not the next Coldplay, you understand, but at least there's a whiff of longevity about them.

There's no doubting that The Polyphonic Spree are a great idea for a band, but there's something a little hollow at the centre of their quasi-religious pronouncements of joy and merry-making. There are 25 or so converts on stage tonight, clad in white cassocks and brandishing a range of orchestral weapons. Bandleader Tim DeLaughter conducts his crew through a series of mantra-like choral ditties - brainwash pop, if you like - but although they receive an ecstatic reaction from the crowd, they really start to take the mickey by the end of the set; their closing number appears to go on until the end of time.

The back of the Barrowland ballroom has started to noticeably thin out by the time headliners The Datsuns take the stage; a shame, because it's hard not to fall for their idiot-savant take on AC/DC riff-metal. There's no apparent irony to their stripped-down headbanging - a good thing - and they almost match the mighty Motrhead for sheer headbanging dumbness on the one-dimensional Lady. But once you've recorded one album of faultless metal excavation, is there really any need for another?

Tellingly, the last song stretches and stretches - like the Spree's final number - as if even in the middle of an ocean of deafening guitar squall, The Datsuns are subconsciously aware that this is their one moment. They'd better wring every last widdly guitar solo out of it.

Copyright 2003 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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