Aidan Smith - Manchester
[Urbis Centre]

A nice warm-up performance for next months In The City show, unfortunately held in the pretentious Urbis centre. Strangely, the venue appears to be the museum entrance foyer with a make shift reception desk bar, it's quite possibly the most anal, soulless music venue ever. Nevertheless, this is the first time Aidan is joined by his brand spanking new backing band (a group of scruffy mates in other words) and a possible taster for some forthcoming album material.

Starting off lonesome, a short acoustic set sees Aidan throwing in crowd pleasers such as 'Ode to Delia Smith', it's both charming and fun. With his actual band, an opening rendition of the 'Cheers' theme tune goes down an absolute storm. The tracks from his two mini LPs sound excellent and are given new life, not only do they excel the recorded versions, they sound reworked and spiced up. As a band, they already sound fairly polished and together. New songs are similar to the 'At Home With' numbers - witty, diverse and incredibly infectious.

After the band leave, Aidan performs another solo set for which seemed an eternity. Not surprisingly, fans shout for live favourite 'Boybands', the tune Smith will undoubtedly be tarnished with for the rest of his career. At around 25 tracks in total, the evening began to drag horribly. His live shows may become as self-indulgent as Badly Drawn Boy's at this rate. Nevertheless, he's come on a great deal as a live artist and his self-confidence has increased tenfold. The album is sure to be a huge success.