Roxy Music @ Lovebox, Victoria Park, London

The weather holds for today, which is nice, but the music is rather inclement at best. Kicking off with Toro Y Moi, woefully mis-programmed to play in the early afternoon to approximately no one, things don’t get off to a vintage start. In truth, the 20 minute set contains some super moments of dance-pop exhilaration, but the lack of audience renders it a little flat to say the least.

Onward, and 2009 Mercury nominees The Invisible are out to send the remaining onlookers either to sleep or to the Gaymers bar (may I recommend the berry cider?). Inefficient atmospherics collude with very little live energy to unsurprisingly poor results, and by the time they limp across the finish line there’s no real unhappiness. These New Puritans manage to bring some people to their feet, but the bluster of two (two!) bass clarinets and some staggering percussion work still don’t manage to affect anyone all that much. Maybe it’s the crowd’s fault.

Actually, there might be something in that. The crowd, unmoved by the spitting, solemn splendour of These New Puritans, are equally unmoved by the smug, garish, soulless, self-aggrandising, borderline-masturbatory sounds of Mark Ronson and his hired band of duffers. He has literally no idea how to approach fusion and arrangement, and no stage presence aside from hair that looks like a beaver’s tail. Allow us to recount the guests he brings out: Spank Rock (actually, that’s pretty good), the drummer from the Kaiser Chiefs, Kyle Falconer from The View, the singer from Phantom Planet and, finally, Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. The stage heaves and sags with the weight of these musical divs, and only feels lighter when the cherub from Phantom Planet decides to crowd-surf with embarrassingly poor results. We exit to the sound of Kyle Falconer flogging the corpse of ‘Valerie’ by The Zutons.

Happily, though, we wander past Grandmaster Flash who delivers a wonderful, fast-moving set that proves the ‘Sound Of Tha Police’ still packs a truncheon punch, even though we can’t actually see him from outside the arena.

Headliners Roxy Music must be feeling extremely nervous not having played live since their heyday, and start a little falteringly. Ponderous sax/oboe instrumentals, book-ended by the odd stomper, make for a confusing ambience that leaves the audience behind a little bit. Luckily, though, they have one of rock’s finer rabble-rousing back-catalogues, and the climactic run of ‘Virginia Plain’ and a euphoric ‘Love Is The Drug’ do just about enough to make it a success and bring the evening to a fine close.