Tall Ships / XOYO

Three years ago, no one was giving Tall Ships much serious thought; being math-rock-y, half unimpressive noddling. Flash forward to a sold out XOYO show and a few daytime radio plays from Fearne Cotton and they're the hottest ticket in town. The initial reference points are still there, but now they're a much bigger beast.

With a debut album full of bambast and intamacy, being claimed as golden by almost everybody that writes about them, they had reason to be extatic as they took to the stage and opened with one of the best album openers of the year, 'T=0'.

There is a strange conundrum to Tall Ships though; for all the cool beardy blokes that love 'em, they're largely appealing by using the same, sometime sickly but always affecting power moments which have largely made Coldplay such a success (though in tracks like 'Gallop' Tall Ships posses a lot more oomph). Just to be clear, that reference isn't the start to a backlash, it's a sign of things to come. Tall Ships didn't leave the room without leaving everyone a solid fan - give it three more years and we'll probably wonder how we ever caught them so intimately.