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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.

The Wild Beasts, Laura Groves, The Debuts, Spondi Pradlo Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

No matter how huge Spondi Pradlo could get - and hearing them one suspects they will not be the next U2 - they will always be known as the band with one of the more ludicrous names to have been considered and passed as acceptable. I'm very sure it has a meaning that that meaning is probably as earnest as Joy Division or Enola Gay and that not knowing it makes me a Philistine of the highest order but even if it does it is still a name that virtually guarantees a struggle for popularity.

Which is a shame because The Pradlo, Spondi, The Spon Boys, Pradders, SP, Whatever, sound rather interesting. They are spirited and manage to fill the stage at the Love Apple with any number of curiously played instruments and the crowd with enough interested acquaintances that they are the best received first band at Granadaland since the insanely good The Swing Movement impressed last year.

This Friday is Granadaland's second birthday. Four baloons hang from the ceiling and real ale is two pounds a pint and these things are done in celebration of the event which stands as a testament to founder Mark Husak. Tonight his event is as full as one has ever seen the Love Apple and the crowd is young and peopled with pretty things who jabber loudly between Spondi Pradlo and the second band The Debuts who open living up to the NME style billing of "Girl fronted Joy Division" but soon spin into sounding rather too much like The Long Blondes to claim genuine originality - something about new year in music seems to have everyone clamouring for all things new and different while in contrast in eleven months time every other song heard will be Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time.

Tonight The Debuts are amusing without being enthralling and they struggle to control the increasingly restless assembled masses but that struggle pales compared the the slight frame of Laura Groves who barely visible on the low stage and is disrespectfully ignored by many who chatter loudly throughout the set and for sure one might thing that Groves needs to roughly take the attention of the audience or perhaps someone should give the Northern Working Men's Club motto of "No talking while the turn is on" but the delicate shading of the Shipley teenager's Joni Mitchell-esque vocal tremblings do not lend themselves to such coarseness and those who can't or won't hear miss out.

Groves is better suited to the stage of larger events - she was never better than her slot at St George's Hall on one of the BD1 nights - where her vocals fill rooms uncontested. Tonight everyone is the victim of Granadaland's success but still the lament of single I Am Leaving - "My home was silent/My town was hidden somewhere in the dark/A spark ignited my imagination." - is music to be in love to and hotly tipped many here will no doubt claim to have taken more notice. Groves goes onto a musical sideline in the next month and with eager ears Dalliance awaits.

Dalliance ears were more curious than eager about Kendalites The Wild Beasts who headlined but that curiosity was rewarded by a surprising and entertaining mash up of fifties teen Dance Hall and the most modern guitar driven indie. Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants is high pitched and enjoyable and Through Dark Night's Elvis growls seem to sum up the band's ethos of showmanship without the compromise of parody. Perhaps not the finest songsmiths but the win over the previously inattentive and dancing breaks out. The Wild Beasts stagecraft shines through and while one suspects that they may spend many a year as a very good opening act for the likes of the Kaiser Chiefs tonight they deserve the credit for finishing of a night that troubled as Bradford's best music night veered to being more about hair than hearing.

Sky Larkin', White Light Parade, Buffalo 77 Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

Sky Larkin' suggest perfect pop. Perhaps it is the lacking a G to remind one of 1980s Video Game classic loopin' or perhaps it is the air of Sarah Records around the band but their name at the top of this evening's Granadaland bill is an indication of type.

On the undercard were to be The Sugars - modern Boo-Wop kids that they are - but like Rooney injury has ruled them out and so the slimmed down bill begins with the pseudo-Americana stylings of Buffalo 77.

Coming from the Midlands Buffalo 77 are a bassless three piece and very pleasantly they aurally harkens back to the early 1990s 4AD doodlings. It is simple and melancholic and all the better for it with the noir three's lead singer Jay Leighton's musing vocal complemented by a twiddlesome keyboard.

The wheel is not reinvented but the motion is good and the three have an impressive presence on stage. Avalanche is the stand out moment closing the set "Mid-October and I'll start it up again/It's not over but it is almost at an end/please, why do you have to say that?" is typical of the soothing lyricalisms and the night is started well with something like pop but of a more fracture type.

White Light Parade are approaching fixture status in the Bradford music scene but markedly improve to a point where they push past support slots and onto bigger and better which will surely come with the release of debut single Wait For The Weekend in December which - when played tonight - is greeted with an insane boogie by three of the more loyal followers. They are a band who should inspire loyalty with their swaggering attitude of ebullience which fits the cold Friday night in Bradford and lifts all listening. Musically they are tight with the brothers Danny and Johnno Yates complementing each other's picked out guitar work riffing off each other until Johnno's strings meet microphone finale.

Comparisons are easy and obvious but there is a glistening of originality in songs like Turn The Lights Down "Six O'Clock/I've been locked up/But I just want to go home." It is a craving for Liberty rather than a stealing of it.

Sky Larkin' cannot match the pace of WLP and come over a little more shambolic and less driven than the previous act. Vocally they sink under a fuzz of guitar - and not in that cool Steve Albini way - and lack a projection.

Which is not to say that they are not entertaining - they are - but that they seem unsure as to which direction they want to take you. Are they perfect pop or rough and ready? They play a couple of new songs and appreciate the friendly atmosphere of the Love Apple more than the previous night's Club NME crowd and the Love Apple responds with hearty applause but one is left confused and wanting to hear more of the melody of Buffalo '77 or the swagger of White Light Parade.

The night ebbs away pleasantly into the cold Bradford sky. Buffalo 77 are sombre, White Light Parade serious and Sky Larkin' a little sillier. All present pop of a sort and perfection is always something to strive for rather than achieve.