It looks as if the rock-dance beats and frenzied glo-stick waving of Nu-Rave have finally found their way to Edinburgh. The local papers might still be attempting to drum up public indignation over ‘`illegal raves’ in the capital’s old railway tunnels (the latest culprits appear to have been The Vivians, possibly the least ‘`rave’ band on the planet) but the true revolution is taking place on the dancefloor. Strutting its funky stuff somewhere between the indie rock of the Arctic Monkeys and the big beats of the Chemical Brothers, Nu-Rave is all about making dance music – with real instruments for a change.
There might be a few glo-sticks bouncing around in the darkness tonight, but The Sunshine Underground are more New Madchester than Nu-Rave. They still have their sights blurrily focused on getting us all dancing, but their tent is firmly pitched in front of Glastonbury’s main stage, rather than in a disused chalk pit alongside a homemade PA. Craig Wellington even belts out his vocals through the echo-chamber effect of a reverb pedal, making the Cabaret Voltaire’s small, vaulted dancefloor sound like Wembley Stadium.
Ultimately, though, everyone’s waiting for one tune, the exceptional ‘`Commercial Breakdown’, and Wellington’s wise enough to keep the big guns for the end. He teases us for a while with the single’s B-side ‘`The Way It Is’, one of the danciest moments of tonight’s set, but eventually they deliver the song we’ve all turned up for and those glo-sticks go wild. It might not be the tightest performance of the night, but everyone’s too busy bopping their brains out to notice. There’s one more song to come once its final chord has faded out, a slightly misguided attempt to upstage their biggest hit, then we’re all herded back out into the cold. It might not quite be Nu-Rave, but there’s a buzz around the Leeds foursome that’s hard to resist. They might not need that reverb pedal for much longer.