Needledrop, The Croft, 8th Nov

Mixed emotions about this one really, I was interested in seeing what the guitarist from the Fun Loving Criminals would do, but wasn't quite prepared for it to be as dodgy as it actually was! The crying shame of the whole night was that when Needledrop (www.needledropnyc.com) actually played, the audience was almost entirely made up of members of the other bands.

Irish singer-songwriter Mark Greville opened proceedings, the man has a fantastic voice and a couple of really good songs, but slipped all to often into melodies and chord sequences that Radiohead amongst others would dearly like to have words about I'm sure. The Fluids (www.thefluids.com) were bad. Apart from being a rock band that doesn't rock in a basic kind of way their singer 'sings' in an entirely different key to the rest of the band. This is not cool. With trepidation we returned to the room having ran away from The Fluids to see The Bears blowing the doors off the previous two acts. Light-hearted semi-hiphop and singsong tunes about 'real life' issues like working in an office, it's not often you hear lyrics about fat health & safety representatives to a funk-hop backing. Funny and very enjoyable. Needledrop were good, but missing half a band. The singer is very pretty, but coy and motionless. She really needs to get more into the songs, and overcome the shyness. They played along to a backing track of drums, bass and keyboards - it worked very well but really, how hard is it to find these instrumentalists for a good band? The music is chilled out trip-hop, similar in tone to later FLC albums. Not the best gig ever, but worth it just to find out about The Bears!