Saturday 09/04/05 Sonic Boom Six, Skylar, Action Hank, Spontaneous Suggestion, Lampoon @ Alton Community Centre, Alton

You turn your back for six years and suddenly your school haunt's got a thriving punk scene. How unfair is that? Fair as the golden sun if you’ve had the sense to move away from the place, but outstanding if you’re one of the music kids who remain. Legless Promotions don’t go in for the miserly sparseness of acts that organisers with actual funds tend towards either, we get five bands tonight and not an adolescent's hairbrush in sight.

 

Let’s get this straight – they’re all technically very good. In fact, Lampoon are so good that they unleash a barrage of excellent punk seemingly without moving a muscle. This is all very well if you close your eyes, but it’s bloody boring to watch.

 

On the other hand, so is Spontaneous Suggestion’s singer, who weaves around looking nervous as hell, which is fair enough given the tepid funk-rock blaring out of the speakers. Happily, the bored folk who leave return to find the band have suddenly turned into Bloc Party and are churning out a stupendous song called ‘You Got It’. Relentlessly emotional, it’s bloody good once they stop pissing around trying to be Audioslave.

 

Such flashes in the pan are forgotten once Action Hank, all seven of the blighters, make it on stage. Their lanky frontman has the bitter laugh and mad eyes of British Man Unfulfilled, and his introductions to songs are similarly off-kilter but tinged with the comic insanity of a great cabaret act – think Blackadder with trumpets. Deliriously loopy circus songs squabble with swing, jazz and ska while assorted band members use children’s toys and instruments stolen from the music teacher’s cupboard to make an acerbically theatrical show. More please.

 

Melancholy reggae quartet Skylar rarely perform as they’re too busy being melancholy ska-core quartet Howard’s Alias, so tonight’s appearance is something a bit special. This they mark by losing their trombone player and playing the entire gig on the floor, while singer Matt Reynolds wanders around sans mic to sing his disarming Bob Dylan ramblings into people’s faces. This is reggae for people who hate reggae, utterly joyful and not a dreadlock in sight. Any band who succeed in making a tuneless bunch of twenty-somethings do a perfect four-part harmony as a finale deserve prizes.

 

Manchester headliners Sonic Boom Six need to pull something pretty good out of the bag. Unfortunately they spend the next half hour as No Doubt with knobs on, which is pretty disappointing. A small, cute female singer and three guys will get that as a lazy comparison, but this was uncanny: add in the ragga tips, squealing, ska-pop, punk, anonymous boys, cutely dressed female, rapping and you’re firmly in Stefani Land – hell, their best song nicks the tune from ‘What You Waiting For.’ Funnily enough, once their singer removed the stiffly professional sheen by mouthing off to the crowd in maternal fashion they were much more interesting – shame they spent the gig dressing up as something else.