THE WILD FLOWERS

London Bull and Gate

THE STARS Of Heaven is a fairly awful name but a clever and maybe brave one. Certainly the owner's attempt to live up to it by delivering a set of bright and bold songs – none of which are dramatically memorable or even strikingly original but nearly all are possessed of a discernible physicality and zest – highlights the blandness of many of their contemporaries.

With their unpresupposing shirts, matched by unpretentious and basically orthodox pop structures , the Stars (!) are sometimes sharp and polished. sometimes a shade lax and shoddy – as you would expect a good decent honest combo to be There is no sense of concealing anything, no furtive trying to sound like this or trying not to sound like that, just a level rundown of what’s on their minds. They even, straight faced and in full view, performed a song which sounded like an Alarm reject – imagine!

And afterwards it wasn't so much particular details but the overall rattling aura of the thing which lingered. The Stars give the impression that even this early in their existence they're riding on a crest of a wave. A wave which presumably stems from the energy and delight of breaking out into wider ground and attracting people to them.

Strangely their recorded work to date. a single and a Peel session, are incredibly limp affairs compared to their stage set. Currently they have a one off deal with Rough Trade – as they played. the corners of the hall bristled with A&R people – but you feel that a commercial push would have to be carefully designed not to iron out the creases (and the shirts) which make the group interesting to begin with.

Where the Stars have a compelling sense of optimism, The Wild Flowers are riddled with pessimism and seem to be founded on conceit and deception. Their poses are daft, their gestures are futile, they do a bad VU imitation, they move like they're diseased and their best songs are the loudest ones.