[Clear And Refreshing holiday report]

"Hello, we're the support band" says Darren Van-Asten, lead singer with brutal, uncompromising blues-rock hotheads Junk Box, just before unleashing another one and a half minute noise bomb into the middle of the steadily filling theatre floor. John Devolle's guitar snarls like a hungry dog and Shoko Ariba's powerful drumming keeps things tight. She has a kind of Meg White thing going on and there's no bass but the Detroit influence is superficial, the short, sharp power-bursts get in, make their point and get right back out again like the Downliners Sect covering Wire and it's a winning combination.

After this, most bands would have a hard job coming over as anything other than bloated and excessive and, for those in the audience not busy waving and cooing at The Libertines' Pete Doherty in the balcony above, the Cherubs sound exactly that. There's some fine wriggling about going on in the lower half of the singer's body and some heavy Joy Division stuff happening in the bass department but they don't quite hold it all together, the music isn't memorable and their performance is just on the wrong side of shambolic.

So, officially now the best band in Britain and responsible for the sale of more red soldiers' uniforms than Napoleon, The Libertines. Traditional opening song "Horrorshow" is bumped down the roster to make room for "The Saga", and before you know what's hit you they've dashed headlong into "Don't Look Back Into The Sun" and a thousand voices are screaming "let me go!" to an increasingly wasted looking Pete Doherty. Shambolic is becoming the watchword for the night but The Libertines have made it into an art form. Pete and Carl strut around each other petulantly in various states of undress, never quite looking each other in the face but at the same time each constantly aware of what the other is doing. When Pete bumps Carl's arse, Carl aims a donkey-kick back at him, when Pete swings his guitar round like Charlie Chaplin carrying a ladder, Carl is bending down to get his pick off the floor, do they even notice what it is they're doing? Pete doesn't seem to notice anything, he only notices the audience enough to throw his guitar at them, he barely acknowledges his other bandmates, it's really just the two of them on this trip and it's both fascinating and disturbing.

The slow but steady influx of new songs into the set is promising and bodes well for the forthcoming album, should they get round to finishing it. And finish it they should, because the more they're tied to their old material, the more frustrated Pete will get, and the more frustrated he gets, the greater the likelihood of trouble. When Carl steps up to sing "I Get Along" the hall inhales as one, ready for a mass roar of the song's pivotal "fuck 'em!" Pete seems a bit more at ease and manages to say a few words to the audience but everyone leaves with the overriding sensation that this was merely the prelude to bigger things. Even more glorious or even more catastrophic we can't tell but something's round the corner and knowing The Libertines it'll be both. -Ian Martin, Mar.19.04