 | | Sandbox (pic: Karen McBride) |
On the night though, there’s no show stealing from the soap star, as all four bands on offer put their hearts and souls into their performances, with varying degrees of success. Openers Sandbox have been knocking around for a while now and showed their experience with a fine tight sound that under-lashes lead singer Lennie’s sugar and spike vocals. There’s touches of the early 90s to their sound, with Sleeper and Echobelly being the obvious reference points, but there’s also enough originality to make them warrant further investigation.  | | The Sidelines (pic: Karen McBride) |
The Sidelines, however, will be lucky to get such a response. Having barely learned their basic chords, they launched into a set of endless mediocrity, attempting to surf the Arctic Monkeys zeitgeist but falling way below the Sheffield band’s standard. They desperately need to get to grips with their instruments and write some songs if they’re going to go anywhere. Carlis Star don’t have such problems. Theirs is throwabout fun and their sound stays just the right side of chaos to be enjoyable.  | | Carlis Star (pic: Karen McBride) |
Positioning their boy-girl lead vocals either side of a swirling dervish of a guitarist meant that concentration was pushed onto the whole band and their sound, rather than just the singer. They offered half an hour of joyous cacophony that sounded like an obscure jigsaw - apart it might not have made sense, together it was more than enough. And so to Shepherd’s Pi. Leaving aside the awful name and the day job of their lead singer, the question has to be: are they worthy of a headline slot?  | | Shepherd's Pi (pic: Karen McBride) |
Sadly, the answer is no. For all their musical competence and at ease stage manner, there’s simply too much going on in their sound. Genre-defying is an admirable ambition but when you’re sweeping from cod-Streets to ska, Libertines-lite to rock-out, you only leave your audience confused. Sure, they’re no Magic Alex or Scarlet Division, but without paring down the ideas and tightening up the tunes, they’ll never be more than a footnote to an acting career. | 
