Clambering into the sweatpit of leeds, Ladyfuzz are rounding off their set. Well, there’s three of them, a girl called Liz in a ballgown and blonde hair, she’s sort of yelping and being all naughty and haughty all at once. Mister guitarist thinks he’s Nick Zinner, and the drummer, ah, I don’t remember the drummer. They’re very *now*, you might say, if ‘now’ involves such buzzwords as ‘angular’ and ‘arty’ and the prefix ‘post’, but despite nodding my head along to their Yeah Yeah Yeahs-esque micro songs, it seems a bit hit and miss with the boyish crowd who are already practicing their ‘Oh! Oh-oh. OH! Oh-oh’ Futureheads impressions. Ladyfuzz doggedly earn our respect in the end, though, and with a bit more lady and a bit less fuzz they shall earn a lot more than that some day.

The Futureheads march on stage and before they’ve arrived they’ve launched into ‘Decent Days and Nights’. The crowd are frenzied. They’re really in a different league to the support acts, as all the best bits from their album are thrown in without respite. It’s simply impossible not to like. All the yelps and ‘ohs’ and ‘shouldda known!’ and ‘doo doo doo doo doo’ that leap out of the stereo at you at home are recreated tonight to sublime effect. The air is rank with the smell of Irn-Bru, even though no one is drinking it. Some bands just have an aura, a zest about them, and the Futureheads have it in spades. They’re no bandwagon-jumper-onners. It’s northern soul. As Ross and co part the crowd for a double chorus during ‘Hounds of Love’, the left singing ‘oh-oh’ and the right singing ‘OH! Oh-oh’ there is magic in the air tonight. The futureheads are bright, they taste orange, and Leeds is sticky tonight.