NME Radar Tour

Today was the day of the NME Radar tour at the University's Student Union. I hadn't really heard of three of the bands playing but I really like Marina and the Diamonds so I was going to see them primarily. I think that they have great potential to be a huge success in the not too distant future and with the backing of NME, that is almost the equivalent of getting investment from a Dragon's Den dragon in the business world and you are likely to shoot to fame very quickly. She also revealed during the gig that her first single is coming out in about a months time (just found out it's November 2nd) and it will be Mowgli's Road which is one of my favourites. She was definitely the best performer of the night and kept the crowd entertained between songs and during the inevitable technical difficulties when the keyboard refused to make a noise. Also the crowd really seemed to enjoy her cover of Late of the Piers' Space & the Woods and it was nice to see her covering someone else's songs as well as just her own stuff.

I actually quite enjoyed the set from Yes Giantess and they sounded quite a bit like Passion Pit, a similar style using synths and all of the tunes they performed were really easy to get into even if you hadn't heard them before. The only shame was that they started about 5 minutes after the doors opened, hardly giving us enough time to get drinks before the performance. It was a good start to the evening though and the simple but clever drum beats just made you want to start tapping and bouncing along to the songs.

Next up was Local Natives, another band from across the pond and whilst they had a couple of nice songs it seemed very samey and not especially unique. Golden Silvers were the last on the bill and were the ones headlining the event. By the reaction of the crowd, it would appear that these were the band they had most come to see. Seeing as that was the case, I was slightly disappointed. Most of the songs seemed to be very unpolished and tuneless, more akin to a group of people just banging on their instruments. There were a couple of songs towards the end which I recognised and the final song was by far their best and actually quite catchy - Arrows of Eros.

On a more technical note, the lighting for the event was superb. I'm not sure whether this was university property or belonged to the tour but it gave off very little heat whilst providing light equally as bright as it's hotter counterparts. The main problem at events like this, especially ones in such small venues is that heat can build up from the lights really quickly and make the whole event rather unpleasant and sticky.

The evening ended with the latest episode of Waking the Dead and *spoiler alert* it would seem that they could be writing Sue Johnston (Grace Foley) out of the series after it is revealed that she has cancer. I really like her character in the series and it would be quite weird without her in it, I'm still trying to get used to the departure of Stella at the beginning of the series but am just about getting used to her replacement Katrina.