Friday 02/09/05 iLiKETRAiNS, O Fracas, Xi, Buen Chico, Unexploded Shells @ The Hi-Fi Club, Leeds

The Hi-Fi Club’s Tea-Time Shuffle is a strange concept which seems to have found favour in Leeds - wherein bands perform to an 'after-work' audience kicking off at the unholy hour of 6.30pm. This makes the opening slot a particularly brutal one, and Unexploded Shells, the first of five Leeds-based bands on tonight’s bill, make little impression. They have too many guitarists, at least one of whom probably pulls secret Slash moves in his bedroom and wishes his bandmates weren’t so goddamn indie. Blankets don’t come much wetter than the two vocalists; the taller barely even registers above the soupy jangle and the bassist looks old enough to know better.

Buen Chico are more competent, but also way more irritating. Like fellow locals The Lodger, they take the C86 blueprint and accentuate the most facile elements. Joyous, wide-eyed naivety is traded in for workmanlike Orange Juice-style choppy guitar and needlessly twee vocal interplay. Xi, meanwhile, are at the opposite end of a spectrum of crap. Pompous, overreaching nu-metal is their speciality, and they’re not even particularly good at that. Basically, they sound like a really bad Cult tribute band who got My First Drum Machine for Christmas, proving that it’s possible to integrate the latest technology and still sound hopelessly redundant. Utter, utter garbage.

It’s only half past eight but time has slowed to a crawl. Remembering a time before the bullshit began is becoming difficult. Thank God for O Fracas, who are predictably wonderful. Half an hour races by in the blink of an eye as they soar through future classics like ‘Kitchenette’ and ‘Zeroes and Ones’. Elsewhere, ‘What Jim Hears’ is a surreal terrace anthem; ‘Forfeit’ is Tourette’s syndrome described in percussive form. Other bands should look at O Fracas and just stop.

iLiKETRAiNS are not one of those bands, though. After a reportedly phenomenal reception at the Carling Leeds Festival last weekend, the audience are in a fevered state by the time the band take to the stage. 'WiLLiAM’SLASTBREATH’ demonstrates perfectly what makes iLiKETRAiNS stand apart from other groups. By turns historical, allegorical and deeply, darkly comical, it precedes both parts of grim stalkers’ anthem ‘BEFORETHECURTAiNSCLOSE’ which is equal parts Sigur Ros and Nick Cave. iLT’s detractors miss the humour in these songs: Frontman Dave has his tongue firmly in his cheek as he sings of extracting a new lover’s teeth to make a necklace for an ex. In ‘THEACCiDENT’ he delivers the couplet "The poison was meant for me / you were caught up in the crossfire, so to speak’ with hysterical gravity". Nice. Only forthcoming single ‘AROOKHOUSEFORBOBBY’ fails to add to the body count, but Dave’s back dispatching with former lovers again in the nine minute finale ‘STAiNLESSSTEEL’. Impressive stuff.