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Wave Machines, Daybreakers, Laboratory Noise and Captain Jack and the King of Hearts. Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

It is a hot night in Bradford and people would rather be on the roadside in the sun outside The Love Apple than inside watching Captain Jack and The King of Hearts and they are right to do so. Two kids singing grime, messing about, wasting time. They finish when one falls from the stage and the reaction of the five or six who are inside goes between bemused to amused. Back to the bedroom lads.

Laboratory Noise are an altogether different affair with polish and experience they are Bradford's finest exponents of post-rock soundtracking and perform well coming back from a six month hiatus. They sweep over the room and gain appreciation from the crowd they have pulled off the pavement into the bar.

Finding less apprciation are Daybreakers who seem a band out of place fitting in a little more soft rock than one might expect. They are a tight band and they make the sort of sounds that if you really like Van Morrison you would probably really enjoy but they fail to grab the distracted audience leaving Wave Machine - fourscousers in masks of themselves - to play to a fistful of people late on.

Drawing from Liverpool's pop tradition Wave Machine craft an entertaining tune with single I Go I Go I Go standing out. They look crestfallen when they finish having played to a couple of dozen but a mental note is made to check them out again.

The Ending Of, Dinosaur Pile-up, Getoutofcities, Bedroom Gymnastics Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

They are young - these Bedroom Gymnastics kids - and in a while the keyboard Katie will be told that she has to go home by her Dad when on stage she is apart from the rest of the band of pale faced yoofs who are warming up the Bradford scene.

They are well supported by old and young and thrash away on guitars through songs like Holes - the oft talked about track- but they have a tendency to bleed one bit of thrashed guitar with howling vocals into another bit of thrashed guitar with howling vocals and one is taken not with a confidence but the opposite.

In a quieter moment they cover that Lisa Loeb song that everyone can hum but no one knows the name of and give themselves away. They can play and they can sing but they lack assurance in their abilities to do so and hide themselves behind the howls.

Howls are one of many noises that will not be heard after the volume excesses of Getoutofcities who are dubbed Post-Rock and after an eardrum splitting set should inspire a joke about posts and deafness but none spring to mind. They are proponents of that swirling, atmospheric, soundtrack music and are entertaining enough but fail to rise above the likes of Falconetti or Lab Noise in Bradford's crowded aural soundscapers.

Immediately rising as high as some demented Pterodactyl are Dinosaur Pile-up who rip through a five song set in their third gig brilliantly. From Kendal via Leeds they pilfer the sounds of early 1990s smart American guitar rock - if you think Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is three times as good as Nevermind then Dinosaur Pile Up are for you - while bringing a sense of modernity to proceedings.

They crunch through My Rock n' Roll and it digs into the head with a powerful bass line thudded out by checked shirt wearing Tom (as distinct to the other Tom sterlingly performing on drums) while lead guitar/vocals Matt fuzzes up both strings and singing to an increasingly appreciative audience. I Get My Direction's loud-quiet-loud approach has the word "Pixies" thrown about in a good way. Matt hopes to have twelve songs done towards the end of the summer and will test them as the three piece tour extensively - "I've just got a van" he says - which could be the making of the band and certainly will give plenty of opportunity to see them again.

Not that keen to be seen again are The Ending Of who grind through a dull set never becoming more interesting than when the guitarist strays too far from his fuzzbox and pulls the wire out. They tell us they have never been to Barnsley before and that seems forced. The set is cut short and time - mercifully - plays a part.

Ear drums recovering then the talk of of Dinosaur Pile-up who go on to support The Rosie Taylor Project in Leeds on Wednesday (16th April) and then on to bigger and better.

Elle S'appelle, Heads We Dance, fourteencorners, Pierpoint Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

Elle S'appelle are a well beaten track and that is not to say that they are not travelling that path well but rather that for all the new band buzz around them one gets the feeling that you could add their catalogue to your record collection and nod along with it for the rest of your days without ever catching the whiff oforiginality.More later for this is Granadaland and there is an order to things and as Mark Husak expands his night to include out of the area bands he is applauded for retaining a loyalty to the local scene he has sponsored for the past two years.

Pierpoint - named after Albert, the famed hangman of Bradford - are a tight collective of would be post-punk/new wave guitar heroes. They have a decent following already and the dedication they obviously have used to file jagged metal edges into sharp songs is impressive but they are let down by a lead singer who snarls a little too derivatively and ends up coming over like a parody of a pop star. Like an actor playing a would be Libertine. Like the sort of character who could crop up in Emmerdale when a band's tour bus broke down outside the Woolpack.

For tonight would seem to be about originality - or the lack of it - and Pierpoint need to stop hiding behind the cliche of a band and be more honest. When they do I believe they could be really rather interesting.

Honest is the watchword of Fourteencorners who once again pour heart and soul into the six song set they play effortlessly excellently tonight. It is familiar stuff on the whole although Marco and Jim - drum and bass - seem to have filled out the sound of We Are Pathetic! We Are Stars! and the whole set seems beefed up for sure but half way through it strikes one that the problem with Fourteencorners is that as sure as an eleven months pregnant girl - they are ready.
They are ready to go above third place on a bill. They are ready to put out something on a shiny silver disc, They are ready to get reviewed by the NME and the Observer Music Monthly. If they could move between songs live quicker - or get some banter to fill the air - then they would be ready to play much bigger venues with interesting accessible vocals from Josh and guitar work from Luke that still amazes me with it's precise speed. They are ready and if they do not get moving soon they will end up stale and that will be a crime for a band this good. Perhaps they lack the confidence to move on but they certainly lack nothing else.

Confidence can be seen in abundance in Heads We Dance who sport Bryan Ferry raincoats buttoned up to the top and loudly project around the filling Love Apple venue. They mix Eno-esque ambitions with an early Human League sensibility and show no fear of producing - albeit avant-garde - pop tunes. Love Version 15 buzzes along impressively as does Love In The Digital Age and both titles point one towards theirinfluences . One day they will release an album and it will have the words "lipstick" and "neon" in the title no doubt and I will buy it because as a band while their influences are apparent they are not scared to veer wildly away from them and as a result they create some genuinely interesting tunes.

Which leads back to Elle S'appelle who - on another night - one may laud for their tight, modern take on eighties pop mixed with a shot of The Darling Buds but tonight it all seems a little derivative and one is left hoping that they do something more edged, more spiky, with the popularity which is being pushed their way.