Maps, One Night Only, The Author live at The Borderline, London

The Author were the first band on stage. Hailed (by the BBC) as the “best band in Jersey”, the band arrived on stage with gaffa taped guitars and a lead singer who managed to look like a Cooper Temple Clause member and Gok Wan at the same time. We suspect the first thing he purchased on his trip to London was a haircut from Shoreditch. The Author desperately want success and they’ve hedged their bets well, stealing riffs from any band that have bothered the charts in the last year. One song manages to go from Bloc Party sparseness to rapid-fire Brianstorm esque Monkeys and then goes all Klaxons for the siren packed money shot. There’s lots of shouting and pointing but it all looks a bit desperate, like a band of pissed and angry cross dressing tramps. The Author plead with the nonplussed audience, claiming they used to live in London to gather support. Then they try to gloss over the fact that while Cock Wand (Gok Wan, whatever) was getting his hair done, the others clearly raided Top Shop on Oxford Street with the aid of an in-store StyleAdvisor. Even uber enthusiastic indie-Yoda Steve Lamacq decided to fuck off until the next band arrived.

Hear The Author’s great rock and roll swindling here

Next up were One Night Only from York. A mess of hair, twee guitars, synths and sad lyrics mixed with euphoric sounds. We like them a lot. They could have come from the 80’s and perhaps supported Deacon Blue had they been born in time. Managing to fuse piano and mid-song line dance shuffles with the kind of harmonies we’re used to hearing from The View, the few songs available on their MySpace are instant classics. The only downside is that Just For Tonight could be Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite new ‘driving’ anthem, but we’ll forget about that for the moment.

Hear One Night Only here

Mercury nominated Maps are a weird but beautiful bunch. The set is full of new tracks from their We Can Create album. Delicate synths get louder and louder, with airy and vacant vocals giving way to pounding drums. It’s like Air having eaten a kilo of skunk and stolen the drummer who does the live percussion for Amerie’s One Thing. Tonight, even with the smoking ban, there’s a wiff of Class B spliffage in the Borderline. Even without spliffage, the sound of Maps makes your brain float and wraps you in the sonic equivalent of one of those comfy silver anoraks marathon runners get at the end of a race. Tonight, with the backdrop of a jellyfish in space, everyone orbits with them. Even indie-yoda.

Get spliff, wear spliff, fly