Hate: all you need

If absolutely nothing else, we've got The Delgados to thank for bringing the likes of Mogwai, Arab Strap and The Radar Brothers to our attention via their Chemikal Underground imprint. However, I saw them on Sunday evening at the Birmingham Academy, and there is a LOT else to thank them for, believe me.

Support act were Aereogramme, featuring Craig B from deceased bass pummellers Ganger. We only caught their last two songs, and my co-gig-attendee somewhat uncharitably labelled them "pointless". I'd prefer to label myself "undecided" and them "beardos who mangle Mogwai's heaviest moments into strange art-metal shapes".

There's something wonderfully self-deprecating about a band who amble nervily onstage to the booming sound of 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' by Sparks, and that's just what The Delgados did. My unfamiliarity with their back catalogue proved no obstacle to my enjoyment of the show. The embarrassing and awkward between-song patter of Emma Pollock, Stewart Henderson and Alun Woodward was instantaneously forgiven when they launched into songs like 'American Trilogy', 'No Danger' and the fabulously misanthropic new single 'All You Need Is Hate'. Any half-arsed 'indie' band striving to notch up a bona fide anthem can lazily wheel in the string section to cloak their own puny efforts with an aura of gravitas (hello Oasis, Embrace, Feeder, Richard Ashcroft...); what sets The Delgados apart from the crowd is the fact that the strings and woodwind are completely integrated within the fabric of songs which blossom into glorious technicolour, to the extent that self-pity and disillusionment attain a bittersweet grandeur. Although with the lyrical content of their tracks they may, like Arab Strap, have their hearts in the gutter, like The Flaming Lips their eyes are very much focused on the stars.

Afterwards, upstairs in the Academy Bar, Boston's Mr Airplane Man played a spirited set of thumping rock 'n' blues to a crowd of Cooper Temple Clausers and Karen Os, and we felt distinctly out of place. I think it's called 'style', daaaahling.