You could be for­given for under­es­tim­at­ing the import­ance of tonight. Just another stu­dent run night, in a stu­dent venue, that’ll barely turn a profit. It’s true, of course, but that’s not a good enough reason to dis­miss it, espe­cially not when you’re look­ing at the line-up. Anna Leddra-Chapman, The Brights, and The Sound Ex, all of them just wait­ing to tip over the brink to take them into the big time. The venue is a little small, per­haps, and a little out of the way — indeed, pretty much off-limits for non-students — but cozy and friendly. Doors were open round about 8.45 p.m., and Anna Leddra-Chapman took the stage at about 9.30. Chap­man is undoubtedly a tal­en­ted singer, with an impress­ive vocal range, and a markedly Eng­lish accent. It becomes clear within a few moments that Chap­man has been doing this for quite some time; her con­trol over her sound is abso­lute, and the whole room were entranced by her voice. Her ori­ginal mater­ial was excel­lently writ­ten, and her cov­ers of Jamie T and Regina Spek­tor breathed new life into the songs. How­ever, des­pite her obvi­ous tal­ent, I can’t help but feel that she would have bene­fit­ted from the sup­port of a viol­in­ist, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing her keyboard-based songs, which to me seemed a little lack­ing in depth. How­ever, it’s easy to cri­ti­cise when any slight short-coming is high­lighted by the qual­ity of the rest of the set.

The Brights, an indie-rock band from Essex, per­formed a tight set. I’m not a huge fan of indie-rock myself, but The Brights worked hard on stage, with a per­form­ance that I can only describe as sexu­ally charged. I can’t say I agree with Drowned in Sound, who claim to be able to hear The Smiths and The Small Faces in The Brights — they’re a lot less depress­ing than The Smiths, and a lot less poppy than The Small Faces, but that’s no bad thing. There’s also some­thing to be said for a band who are pre­pared to travel from Essex to Shef­field to play to seventy-five people, when they’re releas­ing 7“s in Japan, and could prob­ably fill a much big­ger venue back home.

The Sound Ex were the weak­est band on the bill music­ally. Des­pite their four K review from Ker­rang!, they lacked coher­ence music­ally, seem­ing unable to decide whether they were punk-rock, metal or indie. The bassist seemed to be bored by the whole thing, lean­ing against a wall, com­ing off the stage for a minute or so when he didn’t have to play, and gen­er­ally just going through the motions. The lead gui­tar­ist, how­ever, was almost the dia­met­ric oppos­ite. With an arrog­ance befit­ting Slash, his stage antics seemed to be more import­ant than play­ing a solid set. How­ever, I seemed to be in the minor­ity — per­haps every­one had had a few beers, but the crowd were enjoy­ing the set, and that’s enough to make me doubt my own appraisal. The best advice I can give you is to check them out for yourself.

The open mic ses­sion was a pleas­ant addi­tion to the even­ing. None of the acts were sin­gu­larly bad, all of them had at least some merit, with note­worthy appear­ances from Maya (Pocket Satel­lite), Anna Leddra-Chapman play­ing with Kami­kaze Cream Cake, (recently played on Zane Lowe, recom­men­ded by Kissy Sel­lout), and our very own Martyn McLean.

We’re eagerly await­ing a second night, and hop­ing it lives up to the stand­ard set by the first.