It seems each year, this regular showcase of new and intensely hyped acts delves further into the 1990s indie scene for inspiration.
This time, it was the turn of Britpop to make a comeback of sorts on this last night of the tour.
Glaswegian duo Honeyblood immediately sounded familiar to certain members of the audience, gathered in a comically segregated over-30s corner. The band is apparently fans of US big-hitters Throwing Muses and The Breeders and, here, it showed.
Though with a surprisingly dense jangly guitar and pounding drums sound, that similarity ended there. On record, Honeyblood’s slickly produced eponymous debut is addictive; on this night, iffy vocals and a relatively limp atmosphere left little impression.
The headliners, Birmingham’s Superfood, may have sometimes felt like a derivative game of 1990s Britpop Bingo (by turns Blur, Suede and Mansun-esque), though what they lacked in originality, they made up for in stage presence.
With hook-laden future-hit after hit, Don’t Say That and Pallasades in particular got a crowd pogoing joyously.
Taking the best bits from bands responsible for their era’s classic alternative anthems, you could easily foresee these purveyors of retro indie-pop providing some of their own era’s floppy-haired sing-along dance-floor staples.
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