Cork's Bass Oddessy try too hard; their obsession with keeping things "real" - with staying true to whatever off-the-shelf punk ethic they filched from the NME letters page-rendering mawkish and inarticulate a performance strewn with good ideas; not least a mildly inventive collision of jungle and rap. Come on chaps - remember where you're coming from. It ain't LA South Central.
The Roots, in contrast, are a revelation. Their name suggests orthodoxy, a forelock-tugging adherence to hip hop's cliche-ridden traditions. But rather than paying homage to the past, the Philadelphia outfit displays a lascivious contempt for its forebears. Think the Beastie Boys' hyper-intelligent moron-rock keel hauled across the Mississippi Delta and lathered in creamy dollops of 70s soul. Only more so. Yum. We really should be getting tired of the Happy Mondays by now. Shaun Ryder's rag-bag posse of reformed junkies and humourless session musos are only here for our money; they haven't written a new song in seven years - a haphazard cover of Thin Lizzie's overly eulogised The Boys Are Back in Town doesn't count; above all, the entire exercise exudes a cloying reek of nostalgia.
Most everyone here is old enough to have grooved to the Mondays during their early 90s heyday - we really aren't any different from all those 50-somethings who think the Rolling Stones are the best rock group on the planet.
Yet while the Mondays seem on paper a rather desultory prospect, like their vulgar, cocksure swagger is as irresistible as ever. So Step On purrs like a sports car slinking off the production line, Hallelujia is positively cathedralesque in its swooping grandeur and Wrote for Luck marries big beat's spittle-flecked hedonism to the wispy elegia of the Happy Mondays' former label mates New Order.
It seems almost churlish then to point out that this was an exact facsimile of last May's Dublin gig or that it was at least 20 minutes too short. Doubtless, we'll all be back here in 20 years, still doing our flailing Bez dances and grinning like idiots.
