We're here to culminate a week of action by Unison. Hence the disoriented grown-ups in 'Campaign for a Living Wage' t shirts scratching their heads as US high-school geekniks Wheatus assuage their hormones on stage.
Idlewild too look faintly uncomfortable in this sterile hangar. Still, their noise rages, hard and jagged. At their sharp best they have the edgy, off-kilter gait of early REM with added supersonic volume, each song given sufficient melodic lift to haul it away from terra firma.
Soon Toploader are strutting through an appalling rock-opera version of 'You Keep Me Hanging On'. I wait in vain for the audience to storm the stage and tear them limb from limb, assuming that their presence here signifies at least some tendency towards direct political intervention.
Joe Washbourne constantly beckons to the crowd, a gesture which in these parts roughly translates as, "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough." For a man in his position, with these songs, with that hair, he is surely tempting tragedy. Before 'Dancing in the Moonlight' he suggests that, "If you don't know this song, you might have been living in a shoebox for the last six months." Sounds good to me.
Thankfully Catatonia soon arrive on-stage for their first show in 18 months and their backed-up energy overflows, filling the space in which others have merely thrashed around. Leading the rousing stomp of 'The Mob', Cerys Matthews is resplendent in white tails, the angelic conductor of a glam-stomp blitzkrieg. Destroying preconceptions whilst swigging from a bottle of wine, she sings with a voice as powerful as any in pop.
A few well-placed snipes at Geri Halliwell introduce 'Mulder and Scully', turning a cute single into a fantastic explosion of joy and anger. It's quite staggeringly good: a huge, undeniable three minute rallying cry and jaws drop all around as those who thought they knew the band look on. Jesus God they're good. In fact, for three minutes they're possibly the best band you ever saw.
Then they do it again. 'Road Rage' beginning unassumingly before all of a sudden we're on the launch-pad as the rocket goes up. The band's beefy sound is cracked apart and fused into molten wonder by Cerys' voice and that all-conquering chorus. If this is an indicator of form then, trust me, you should see Catatonia as soon as you possibly can.
