REVIEW OVERVIEWS

We're not entirely sure how Dave Simpson can be so sure Meg White's knickers were either black, red or white - we were watching the TV coverage too, and although there were plenty of shots of her butt poised perkily on top of a stool that had MEG stitched onto it, it was snugly encased in trousers which would afford no such view.

You have to dig around quite a bit to find the reviews this year on the nme festival site - pride of place is given to the free festival ringtone download offer, of course. It's worth the effort of finding, though, for some interesting perspecives - Mark Beaumont points out that the crowd increased tenfold between the Doves leaving the Pyramid stage and the Killers entering it, and turns in a beautiful review of the Doves, which will appear in textbooks in the future as an example of damning with faint praise:

Doves call us ‘Glasters’. Doves show films of space exploration and swimming bikini babes on the big screens (because, let’s face it, The Bravery they are not). And Doves prove themselves a worthy future headline act with field-shattering Big Tunes like ‘Pounding’, ‘Snowden’ and a gigantic ‘The Cedar Room’.

Was he even at the same gig as us? No, because we were at home slurping down ice tea and thinking about mattresses. Elsewhere, Dan Silver found The Others "earnest" but enjoyed MIA; and reports half the Peel Tent emptied when Brett and Bernard came on.

Over at The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey seems slightly alarmed by the Disaster Des nature of The Editors: They strike you as the sort of people who couldn't replace a lightbulb without the ceiling falling on their heads. She then turns around and, in a comedy plank-in-face moment, hits them with the description of "the Brummie Interpol".

She's reserved her best ire for the Others, though:

They are not the worst band in Britain but they have the worst frontman. Dominic Masters' torturous cockney whine makes John Lydon sound like Karen Carpenter. His lyrics might be the work of a remedial pupil at Jack Black's school of rock. "I don't want to sell my soul to the man," he whinnies. Fair enough, but he might want to consider part-exchanging it for a brain.

That's the problem for bands this year: like everyone else, the reviewers are cold, wet, and slightly pissed off. You have to work that bit harder to win them over.

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