UR TV CAST

Several songs tonight reminded you that rock’n'roll was invented to combat this kind of thing.Top of the bill, and rightly so, were the Bluetones. They pack a powerful Britpop punch, but with an obliqueness that’s not found in the current heavyweight contenders: all structural complexities and song titles that you can never find in the lyrics (although that might have been because a rival band had taken over the mixing desk, it seemed, and were burying Mark Morriss’s voice under heaps of distortion).The Bluetones have a talent big enough to burst out of any pigeonhole in which they’re wedged, but some reference points are the Boo Radleys, Suede back when they had Bernard Butler on guitar, or the Stone Roses back when they had tunes. This unkempt Hounslow four-piece were touted as last year’s Next Big Thing, but their Estimated Time of Big Thingness was postponed to 1996 This time it looks as if they’ll meet the deadline. Their acclaimed album, Life (Stockholm), has oddball charm, but easy listening is often more accurately termed easy ignoring. You couldn’t get a bassist with a jumper, big glasses and a Garth-from-Wayne’s-World haircut like that anywhere else.The Cardigans are a lot more fluffy than Fluffy, specialising in twinkling indie easy-listening, with a sugary keyboard and a singer, Nina Persson, who has no qualms about tweeting “do be do be do”. A lot better than expected, even if Creation should be renamed Revival.The only vaguely unusual group were the Cardigans They have a head start in that department, being Swedish.

On the other hand, we should also expect them to add something of their own – and after a song or two they do.They have the lumbering, swaggering confidence of a drunk, a Bourbon- voiced front man, some effective ballads and some creditable lyrics (“Living in a house/ With your mates and a mouse/ Living in a flat/ With a girl and a cat”). If they do make it, school-playground debates about the merits of the blonde versus the brunette will rage with a heat that hasn’t been felt since the passing of Abba.Once you’ve heard Heavy Stereo, you’ll never compare Oasis to Status Quo again. Heavy Stereo haven’t just stolen the Quo’s music, they’ve made off with their faded, saggy-kneed jeans, and nipped next door to clean out Marc Bolan’s house while they’re at it. Heavy Stereo’s chunky guitar rock was so traditional that I only just resisted the urge to belt up the street to the Virgin Megastore and buy some jungle CDs, just to remind myself which decade we’re in.The band’s record company is Creation, home of Oasis, Primal Scream and Teenage Fanclub, so it’s only to be expected that their influences couldn’t be more obvious if they stacked their record collections on stage.

Burglary is a crime that leaves its victims depressed and enraged, and in this case the victims were the audience. Before they convince us they’re any good, they’ll have to convince themselves. On the evidence of the tense, stiff drumming, for instance, I doubt the group auditioned 20 candidates and judged their current drummer to be the best.The Go-Gos for the supermodel generation, Fluffy play Ramones/Buzzcocks style punk-pop: fast, fun, but as yet utterly indistinctive. It’s possible they were just rehearsing the same song over and over again during the entire set, but they still hadn’t got it quite right by the end.Fluffy are reputedly Courtney Love’s favourite band, and the singer has Love’s snarling rasp At the moment, though, the group just look embarrassed. We shouldn’t underestimate her, full stop.The London Astoria is packed Brat-packed, to be precise.