'Polly' makes a cracker
Disneyporn, Rider, Inner City NoLoGos Zanzibar July 2001

With a chant of "Michael Barrymore", Disneyporn take the stage. This is an acoustic set, in the "no dancer dressed as a deity" sense of the word. In the "sitting on stools" sense of the word. In the "shuffling members onto different instruments" sense of the word. Just as one of the tunes starts to morph into a seashanty, they call a halt "’cause it just gets really boring."

Some of this set, it’s fair to say, doesn’t work – in the way that cold fusion or curing herpes with dairylea doesn’t, strictly speaking, work. But you enjoy the gall of the experiment – like when they attempt to force John Denver though an electric guitar and pour him over a twin turntable cross-spin. The effect is a sugar cube dissolving in a big bowl of Nightnurse. Do not operate heavy machinery; but brush well between meals. The leaving of the highway is at its most accute during their cover of Polly – note-for-note Nirvana suddenly becomes a choir evening led by Patrick Bateman: are they changing the words? Are they singing a completely new language? Is this just all in my head?

Rubbing eyes in disbelief, could one of Rider be sporting an Oasis tshirt? Because if they’re your heroes, it’s time to kill yr idols – you’re better, and a whole lot cleverer. You can see the similarities between the inspiration and the offspring, but to compare Rider to Oasis is to try and measure Rider’s grounded, observational, efficient Royle Family with the gesture satire of Oasis’ Watching; the proud, committed struggles of Tranmere with the buy-everything, win-nothing swagger of Blackburn. Perhaps the greatest gift the Gallagher brothers left us before they disappeared behind the VIP rope at the Met bar and imploded was a lee of brighter, smarter, more experimental acts who can do what they once did (sharp, impassioned, simple but not stupid songs from the heart) but are also aware that they musn’t do what Oasisdid next (let us down; knock out songs on a production line basis; sell their souls.) You hope that Rider wear Oasis tshirts as a reminder of what happens to bands who lose sight of what being in a band is all about – the music. Because at the moment, Rider are the sort of Liverpool band who stop you being ashamed of your postcode – and judging by the strange but beautiful bagpipe noises they’re teasing out of their instruments, there’s a lot more to come.

Well, at least Inner City have an apt and topical name, since it seems that their geographical namesakes are in for a summer of breaking out in pointless noise and ill-defined unpleasantness from people who could and should know better. I can’t pretend to understand register, or to unravel chords and octaves. I don’t even know how a metronome works. However, this is fine, because I’m only meant to be listening. As it is, I listen, and it sounds so out of synch I wonder if my ears have sometimes become untuned. You’d hope that bands would be able to agree some things amongst themselves, like how to split the bill for petrol for the van; whether to sign to a label or not; and, just maybe, what song they’re meant to be playing in what time. Were it not for scrabbling around to find the fillings their dischord were dislodging, I’d have got together a petition to point out that "harmony" does not mean "all singing the same words at roughly the same time however you feel like." The sad irony is that, when the band took the stage, they played white boy funk that – while only a few floors below Level 42 – actually didn’t sound that misplayed. As soon as they grimly started to show off that they’d bought a Muse album at some point, that was when it went wrong. There’s nothing wrong with ambition – like the man said, if you’re going to fail, you may as well fail in something spectacular – and I really hope that this was just an off night. If they rehearse some more, they might be okay.

- Simon Budgen