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fourteencorners, White Light Parade, Le Tournoi, Kubera Granadaland at The Love Apple, Bradford

"The views are still astounding though, even without the smoke."

This is the second time in five days that I've seen harder than most rockers Kubera and they are growing on me in a conspiratorial way. They are louder than the Love Apple and it is not hard to see why they get mentioned in The Gasworks but they are amusing and kick this night of four off with energy. The lead singer wears a dressing gown and swears less than last week but my mate who also saw both and thinks that music is music when the amp is turned up bops along and that is good enough for me.

She was not bopping away to the altogether more melodic Le Tournoi who swim between the tweeness of a Sarah Band and something more Steve Albini produced. The view down one of many futures Le Tournoi are a young version of Cinerama circa Torino putting out intelligent pop with a warm tinge, down another they are Heavenly, Blueboy or The Field Mice making smart music for a small band of devotees.

Taaryn's sax is lost in the mixing desk which is a shame but not as bad as the band's unending need to suppressing William and Emilie's intelligent vocals. Le Tournoi are still a work in progress and there is a chance that that work is going to be blistering and blinding and brilliant.

Already dubbed blistering and blinding and brilliant are White Light Parade who - in common with a lot of bands around the City at the moment - are destined for bigger. Tonight they are second on the bill to fourteencorners cause Danny Yates wants to get plastered after they finish and strut the stage with the swagger of an fantastically arrogant band. They aim for The Clash and come over as The Libertines but that is no bad thing. Wait For The Weekend is anthemic, When The Lights Go Down memorable. Bigger things, more record sales, downloads, bigger venues. All that stuff await and White Light Parade will stand alongside The View and probably be lots and lots of people's second favourite band.

Which sounds like a criticism and is not supposed to - the kids lap them up after all - but for all the energy of White Light Parade they are treading a familiar path. They tread it well but the smoke and mirrors of media interest might just mask a bunch of talent lads being put on a three month release cycle with the likes of those scamps from Dundee.

There is no familiar path for fourteencorners who open with a stripped down Small Northern Town and go through five perfectly formed numbers with confidence. Tsotumi sounds better than it ever has done and bursts the stage after Josh's picking through SNT. The increasingly absurdly tall Luke takes flight on We Are Pathetic! We Are Stars! scraping guitar strings and backing with a power call - "So, Come On" never sounded so good.

Nor have fourteencorners - or so is the consensus in an increasingly growing crowd who all seem to know the Larry David samples missing from the live set - who reminisce in sound on The Wedding Present, on Billy Bragg, on Grant Lee Buffalo while having a set of songs that demand attention. They close with New Limbs For Old Flames which would seem to make sense further up the order but while notes fall out of place the impression is that fourteencorners are a band to love not like and that there is no smoke and mirrors and that the view really is astounding.

Harmacy, Laura Groves, Kubera at Fagins Bar, Halifax

These is something impressively beatnik about Fagin's bar in Halifax - scene of the would be double header of Bradford's slack rockers - and would be Pixies - Harmacy and the pixified Laura Groves. It is a bar where lager is drunk from tall stem glasses without staying into real ale territory. It is a place without irony and enjoys that fact.Opening band Kubera lack irony but not quality. They wear rough coarseness as a badge and wear it well going through a six or seven strong set with a heaviness a darker territory. Every song is tagged as sleazy, every song is gravel voiced.

Never one to stay too far down the path to darkness is Laura Groves whose melancholic twang of guitar always is a constant delight. Tonight she is done no favours by the venue which cries out for brick shaking but still commands the room in a way that is rare on a Sunday night in this small Northern town. Imaginary Flights is wistful and dreams away. Six songs pass too quickly.

Local residents and worries about noise cut the night before Harmacy can play and wandering back to the taxi rank two officers of the law pass us and one looks at how the only resident within earshot is a gaudy lit MacDonalds.

Some way to go.