The 22-20s

"It may be the prevalence of many an 'arty' band nowadays, or the media's insistence on genre-specification, but most of those watching Dogs Die In Hot Cars will, within a few seconds of their presence onstage, think that they scream 'punk-funk' with a Rowland-esque voice. Such a term may be vague and highly overused, yes, but it is evidently applicable to DDIHC as the chords are jagged, the bass is jerky and the beat has its leanings in disco breaks, so toes are tapping rather than being stamped on. If there was ever a quirky English supergroup, perhaps called something like The Robert Smiths, they may well have written tunes as jangly and insecure as 'I Love You Because I Have To', or as spiky and optimistically lovelorn as 'Chinese Girl'. Or use such brilliant tactics as sing "I wish I had Paul Newman's eyes / That would be nice" before moving up several notches in a flail of their heads and a twitch of their legs. Or, in an inspired feat rarely seen during toilet-circuit shindigs, to have the keyboard player stand up with a French horn in hand and - here's the great bit - actually play it. They may have, therefore, been as magnificent as the jagged ensemble with the PETA-approved moniker who may confuse us slightly but have just become our new favourite Talking Heads... sorry, band. And, in their own words, we love them because we have to.

The 22-20s, meanwhile, are not really a band for the cynical. Even more painfully zeitgeist than the band before them, they play blues-tinted rawk n' rawl that had the hype (and label interest) reaching skyscraping but brief levels earlier this year. They've already released a live EP as their second recorded output. But this is probably the first major tour that they'll undergo where getting onstage won't involve having to fight a torrent of chequebooks being waved under their noses, and a group named in part after a Robert Johnson song can hardly take it easy. So they play the nu-blues-meets-rockabilly card, displaying a foot stomping power that would turn most of their contemporaries as green as broccoli, and with debut single 'Such A Fool' show that they can do the angsty roots-rock wall of sound thang as well. Lead singer Martin Trimble lets out a holler that not so much suggests that his baby done gone left him, more like she refuses to sling her hook and leave him to bash out some Maximum R'n'B riffs in a garage with his denim-clad mates. Make of that what you will, but as he grabs a bottleneck for an insane slide guitar solo and the rest of the band rock out behind him, then we might as well surrender. You may think you've heard it all before, but it doesn't mean that you won't want to hear it again.