Reading 2012: Django Django, NME/Radio 1 Stage

We may be suffering ‘festival fatigue’ but these boys are perfectly fresh faced as they run on stage, resplendent in their matching tops. It’s a little bit boyband, maybe, but it could be worse, it’s not like they begin choreographed dance routines or anything. That’d be way too much for a Sunday lunchtime.

As the Scottish lads proclaim this to be their first Reading ever and crack open a blistering version of Waveforms, the tent heats up, arms are aloft, and feet are properly tapping. It’s easy to see where the Beta Band comparisons might spring from, but as they cause a mass clapathon with single ‘Default’, and unleash surf guitars and samba rhythms, they’re perhaps more immediate, less spikey, less obtuse.

Of course, despite the best efforts of John Cusack in Hi Fidelity, the Beta Band always remained a cult concern. On the evidence presented here today, it seems unlikely that the same fate will befall their better adjusted young siblings.