Thursday 26/01/06 The Infadels @ The Consortium, Bournemouth

Lucky for Bournemouth, we’re catching The Infadels at the start of their mammoth three month tour which will probably drive them into the ground. Tonight though, the East London lads sweat out an infectious energy that gets the local kids hopping and skanking like kangaroos on hot coals.

OK, so they might not boast the most original sound amidst the slew of new-new-wave bands aping the eighties with a modern twist. In fact, they’re about two years too late with the likes of The Rapture and !!! having already delivered more than adequate updates of the punk/funk blueprint when everything went a bit dancey in the indie scene, but in the sweaty confines of The Consortium it all seems to still be working. Tunes like ‘Can’t Get Enough’ are so brazenly catchy that you can’t help but dance, and the start of their set gets people moving without any trouble, but something’s not quite right. It might be that the tunes sound overly familiar; it might be the abysmal sound the band have to contend with, or it might be that The Infadels don’t have enough solid tracks to fill a whole set with.

Just when Gigwise is getting seriously sceptical about the whole thing, the guys manage to pull back a dangerously weak middle part of the set by fully throwing themselves into the rave side of their sound, and their stronger club tunes suddenly match the energy that is coming off the stage (not least from Richie, the Bez of the band, who flails manically behind a bank of synths and percussion).

It’s all good fun, but you can’t help feeling that the shelf-life for these Cockney racket-makers won’t meet with the ambition they no doubt have. Who knows, maybe they’ll have a burst of originality and surprise us all? Here’s hoping they do.