OK, it’s disclaimers a-go-go for this one. First, please bear in mind that Dario Derma Lena, Transmission’s new drummer, is a band-mate of mine, and
that Dan Austin, the lead guitarist of Archie used to be. With that in mind, off we go!

Archie are a four-piece shoegazey-type group (tonight stripped down to a two-piece), performing earnest acoustic guitar ballads on electric guitars. The lead singer shows some affinity with Squeeze’s Glen Tillbrooke and, less happily, David Gray, while Austin’s effect-drenched minimalism majors on spaced-out atmosphere, rather than melody. At their best, I could imagine them supporting Sigur Ros or, perhaps more  realistically, our own Winchell Riots. If so, they’ll need to get with the programme: in a four-song set, they train-wrecked once and had another near-miss. But I would still like to hear them  again, preferably with the full crew.
For the Commonwealth took to the stage without soundcheck, allegedly because of a record company meeting, which suggests serious contenders. Without going that far, I can certainly see the puppeyish NME giving them the big big-up in the coming months, as they tick most of the boxes for excitation of that notoriously easy-to-please organ. Specifically, they are youthful, tuneful, on the bland side (Scouting for Girls are conjured up at one or two points) and would probably look good on the cover. To my ears, they are doing 1990s American college music, with the bass-line accidentally scrubbed by a tyro tracking engineer with first-day collywobbles, but the set is solid enough. To summarise: the lead singer’s haircut looked more expensive than his guitar.
On to headliners Transmission, whose farewell gig I played two years ago (who says the Oxford Music Scene is incestuous?) Still, trying to assume an unbiassed perspective,  I found the performance of their Muse-influenced first song of the night extraordinary. Lead singer Mark Cobb is a natural frontman, (he looks like a forty year old Keith Richards if the latter had laid off  95% of the drugs), and tonight he sang as if two years of backed-up showmanship had come bursting out of a collapsed dam. All octaves of an impressive vocal range were activated, with a howling falsetto particularly effectively used: I doubt Matt Bellamy could have been as good, although he would have loved to try as the song, with its theatrical Lisztian cadences, was fantastic. The band are without a weak link and gave solid support on this track and beyond-their guitarist is effortless and accomplished, the bass playing is unfussy and Lena’s high-energy drumming is perfectly plumbed into the system. However, the songwriting doesn’t always hold the level of their first triumph, with occasional  forays into straightforward pub-rocking, (one tune reminded me of Aerosmith, which can never be good), and another track with an Arabic-sounding intro just seemed plain odd. Having said all that, the band stands or falls by Cobb’s direct relationship with the audience, and with a mixture of brilliant singing, enthusiastically bad  dancing, and having a bloody good band behind him, he entertained old believers and newbies alike. Welcome back.