17.20, Other Stage

THE RAPTURE are dizzyingly disorientating, and present me with a whole host of questions. What, for instance, is the appropriate behaviour for a member of their audience – should you just nod your head, or should you go the whole way and actually dance? Can I make sense of what’s going on? And, most importantly, do I even like it? Just as I’m beginning to get my head around it all and come to terms with their “standard” fare, skronky post-punk-influenced funk with saxophone lines scrawled all over the top, they chuck an incongruous yet very fine slice of thumping house into the already complicated equation. By the time former Happy Mondays dancer and legendary pillhead Bez appears for set-closer ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’, I’ve pretty much written them off as the sort of band destined to remain forever the darlings of the too-cool-for-school set and very unlikely to ever touch the lives of anyone else. This infectiously thrilling single may suggest otherwise, but there’s also no doubt whatsoever that it’s far superior to anything else they’ve played today. A bit of a conundrum, to say the least.