Hadouken!

What a miserable summer. It's raining again, the roof's leaking and the postal service looks set to down tools once more in the name of progress. Or not, as the case may be.

Still, at least I've something to look forward to: a little birdie tells me that Leeds' best-kept secret Shut Your Eyes And You'll Burst Into Flames have been drafted in to open tonight's show. Problem is that I'm playing both matchmaker for a mate's blind date and pet-master to the latest four-legged, floppy-eared incumbent of chez Gourlay. Oh well...

So, support act missed – and yes, before you ask, it was the aforementioned SYEAYBIF, as guitarist Pat politely informs me from the confines of the balcony – I find myself confronted by an outburst of fluorescent GloSticks. At times it actually feels like being stuck on the towpath of Thoresby Market (local delicatessen of all things trashy, fact fans), as green colludes pink transgressing orange, so on and so forth. But hey, if that's what people want, then so be it.

Which brings me to the love/hate phenomenon that is Hadouken!. Much derided across various sections of the music press though they are, one fails to see how anyone could get into such a lather over something so, so... inoffensive?

Forget all the accusations levelled at the band, and particularly those directed at frontman James Smith for his so-called pilfering of ‘black’ music. Some people are just impossible to please. If they were just peddling the same old 4/4 verse-chorus-verse chorus indie schmindie yawn-rock of so many of their peers they'd be castigated as Xerox-cloned fantasists, yet by the same token the fact that they openly embrace all aspects of 21st Century culture sees them branded as insensitive plagiarists, almost to the point of quite frankly ridiculous accusations of quasi-racism. When, in actual fact, my only gripe with Hadouken! are the songs – or, more to the point, the lack of them.

Sure, 'Superstar', with its adversity radar pointed purely at jealous wannabes, and 'Liquid Lives', which waves a clenched fist at Britain's binge drinking culture, suggest Smith and co. do actually have several valid arguments, while 'That Boy That Girl', for all its anti-scenester gesticulation, is one hell of a tune that most of their adversaries and allies alike would die for.

The rest though, despite the overenthusiastic efforts of all five members of the band, simply fade away into the background, each and every one a collage of schoolboy Linkin Park dreams awash with better basslines and more prudent keyboard hooks.

It's hard to see where Hadouken! will go next. If rumours are true that that they've literally three months to put together a whole album of material, then one suspects it may all end in tears. For now though, whilst not being the most competent band on the planet, they sure as hell give as good as they get, and I for one can think of countless other bands a lot less worthy than this bunch at this present moment in time.