The students are back, and with a new term comes a brand new club night - in this part of the world anyway - as Club Fandango opens its doors in Nottingham.
As an opening salvo, four of the most highly rated up-and-coming acts currently treading the boards are in town, all of whom thankfully place their emphasis on tunes.
First up are Nottingham's own Zapatistas, who fuse an arid post-punk formula similar to that of the Futureheads with jingly-jangly riffs a la C86, and sing love songs about rabbits. They may be a bit rough round the edges, but there is no doubt they have potential, even if they haven't quite constructed the musical equivalent of mumps just yet.
Without further ado, The Bedford Rascals hit the stage, and without being too disparaging about any of the other bands here tonight, it's fair to say these are the people most of the audience are here to see. Despite having only played a handful of gigs, the Rascals are already being talked of as being Nottingham's greatest export since Michael Praed's green tights went back to the Carlton television studios in London, and with a bucketful of melodies pilfered and reconstructed from the Davies' brothers and all who've followed in their path (Strummer, Jones, Albarn, Coxon, Barat...), it's hard to see where they can go wrong.
Singer Ben Brill shares more than a passing resemblance to a certain ex-guitarist from Blur, while all of their songs seem to be named after various "characters", some of whom ('Wishing I Was Alfie Katz', 'Rachel Greening') probably deserve more derision than affection. The way the band rattle and hum their way through their 20 minute slot as though their lives depended on it, only a somnambulist could fail to be enraptured. Highlight of the set though is undoubtedly their take on obscure Kinks tune 'Harry Rag', which captures both the rush and push of Strangeways... era Smiths and infectious nature of The Coral's earliest musings (think 'Skeleton Key' on a high speed treadmill). Make no mistake, you'll be hearing a lot more about the Bedford Rascals in the coming months, and rightly so.
It wouldn't be fair on the other two bands to call their sets an anticlimax, although one or two punters have since disappeared to the bar. Never mind though, as it's their loss, as the 7:21s rock like a rejuvenated Feeder haven't done since about 1997, and in 'The Underground', have a song that induces on-the-spot pogoing whether you want to or not.
As for headliners Keyboard Rebel, they've been around long enough in one guise or another to know that all fads must pass, and though their plaintive Belle and Sebastian-esque maladies do occasionally verge on the suicidal rather than maudlin, their real shining light comes in the shape of quirky, uptempo (by their standards) new single 'Northern Sherpa', which sounds like a 30mph road trip through the back lanes of Devon, and sets the scene for a peaceful, but fitting, finale to Club Fandango's inaugural Notts venture.
