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“What are you here to see?”, asks the girl at the Jericho’s desk. “Just, err, music”, I reply. It turns out that the organisers use this method to calculate how much to pay the performers. Bit depressing, really, isn’t it? A whole system predicated on the assumption that nobody is going to come out on the off-chance they’ll hear some good music looks like a tacit admission that the promoters have already given up on the idea of enticing fresh blood into the venue, and are relying on the acts to bully their friends and colleagues into coming along. What’s even more depressing is that they’re probably right.

Anyway, as the system seems grossly unfair to Samuel Zasada, who is standing in after a change to the advertised lineup, we put our tick against his name. But before we get to Samuel, there’s the unpleasant matter of Luke Keegan’s set to deal with. There he is, strumming away at some forgettable acoustic songs, droning in a voice that’s half pub singalong, and half lax karaoke Bowie, whilst a chap who looks fantastically like a spry Erroll Brown adds some very proficient, but rather disjointed bongo accompaniment. Looking up at one point I see I am one of four people actually listening, three of whom appear to be close friends or family, and the gig begins to feel like an episode of Flight Of The Conchords. “Did you hear about tomorrow?”, sings Luke; yes, it was when I woke up and realised this was a bad and very boring, dream. Thankfully the last song has a bit of drama, featuring the howled chorus “I never had that bloody hammer”, which is either an impassioned defence in a brutal murder inquest, or the sound of petty argument in a carpentry workshop.

When Mr Zasada starts up, we decide that he’s well worth our cover charge support, as his voice is immense: creamy, guttural and melodic, with the breath control to rip into some intriguingly wordy verses. He’s got a real talent, but this set seems deliberately designed to hide this fact. The accompanists don’t help any: a man playing possibly the most uninspired cajon we’ve seen, and a woman who might well be Britain’s top canine ventriloquist, as she seldom opens her mouth, and when she does, the sound is clearly inaudible to human ears. Ignoring this dismal pair, the songs just don’t seem to be quite there. We’d like to see Samuel with a nice tight band at the more literate end of roots pop – say, something in the Counting Crows line – and then we feel we’d have something to get excited about. Once again, the last track is the winner, as the two stooges leave the stage to let Zasada sing a brutal murder ballad, which sounds like Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” rewritten by Travis Bickle. At one point I look up and discover that I’m one of two people actually listening. I’m not sure which is sadder, that the braying horde is not giving this musician a chance, or that he’s not utilising such a great voice to make them sit up and listen.

Jessie Grace’s appearance ups the quality of the night enormously. Put simply, she has a gorgeous voice, and some pretty impressive control to go with it. In the opening number along, which sounds like a version of “Heart Attack & Vine” rearranged by Joni Mitchell, she swoops from sweetly sinister incantation a la mid-period P J Harvey to gutsy rock stridency, with just a hint of soul. She plays the first half of the set on a tiny guitar – is it an alto? – giving just the right amount of garage fuzz to offset her clear, winning voice. Later she switches to a standard acoustic, and the set drifts a tiny bit into Tunstallised neo-folk pleasantries, before the final number (it’s a good night for set closers, evidently), with its playfully lopsided rhythms impresses us once again with Grace’s abilities. I’m reminded of the first time I saw Laima Bite, or Richard Walters: with a voice like this, why isn’t everyone in the room twitching with excitement? But, like Bite or Walters, behind the voice the songs themselves don’t make a gigantic impression on first listening; there are certainly no lyrics that caught the ear. Still, with a voice like that we’re quite prepared to put the effort into finding out whether Grace’s songs turn out to be growers.

When Inlight crank up, the first thought is that there’s been a gross miscarriage of musical justice in this town. They’ve had any number of stinking reviews, but the first tune not only shows a band who look like they’ve been playing together since they were put on solids, but is also an epic piano-led swoon that really isn’t far from A Silent Film’s celebrated stock in trade. The following track only serves to bolster such musings, revealing an instinctive knack for balancing the quartet’s sound, and showing the bassist’s subtle inventiveness.

Sadly, the effect is marred once they get to a mawkish ballad, because not only is the song asinine and vacuous, but the same audience who were literally shouting and banging tables during the previous sets are in rapt silence and serving me a stew of black looks just for having a conversation near the back of the room about how good the band are! Still, you can’t judge an artist by their fans; I’d certainly have to sling the old Wagner records on the fire, if so. Ultimately Inlight don’t quite have the compositions to hold the attention for a full set, and too many songs seem to exist solely because they can play them well. It’d be nice to see some more adventurous writing, and an appeal to something other than the broadest emotions, but we can imagine that on a huge stage in the summer dusk Inlight could be just the ticket. Does the critical reappraisal start here?

By David Murphy

I’ll leave aside any debate as to the ethics and point (or pointlessness) of band competitions, as that’s a dissertation in itself. Instead, I’m wondering why tonight’s Jack FM/107.9FM/SEA/Oxfordshire Music Scene Magazine/Wychwood Festival Next Big Thing final feels less like a gig and more like a Butlin’s Talent Show, with all the attendant forced jollity that suggests, including a Jack FM DJ, Trevor Marshall, as compere and with obvious designs on the Radio 1 breakfast show hot seat.

Mind you, irritating as he is, he’s not a patch on Quadrophobe’s singer, who spends their entire fifteen minute set gurning and mugging like a children’s party entertainer and squawking like a flustered  parrot, while his band kick out a passable but dated funk-rock-cum-ska-pop groove that marks them out as perennial college ball fodder. The brass section and keyboard player give it all a bit of life and muscle but while they possibly see themselves as the meeting point between Dexy’s and Madness, they’re really Jamiroquai fronted by one of the Chuckle Brothers.

By contrast singer/songwriter Beck Lanehart is genuinely funny, with a downbeat patter that involves a joke about funerals. Which she then spends half the rest of her set apologising for and thus ruining the whole effect. She’s got a great voice too, but perhaps too much of the kind you’d expect to hear coming out of the Brit School and with a tendency to over-emote in that Celine Dion way. She leaves her best song until last, but it’s ironic it finds her warbling about being reckless-because-it’s-all-she-knows, when really music doesn’t get much tamer.

Echoboomer and InLight are virtually interchangeable – creatively moribund rock of no discernible character, shape or virtue, just overly-serious arena-indie with occasional nods to Snow Patrol. No, scrap that, Echoboomer sound like Dire Straits and make up in bombast what they lack in actual tunes, while the slightly more epic InLight sound like Keane and rock out with all the off-putting passion of rutting rhinoceroses.

After which, Witches are a class apart. They genuinely rock out. With maracas and trumpet and a chaotic sense of joy that’s been missing all night. In fifteen short minutes they’ve covered bases as diverse as hardcore, Mexicana, alt-country and indie rock with a sometimes ludicrous sense of theatre, like a puppyish mash-up of Sonic Youth, Sparklehorse and Calexico. And then, after an interminable wait, and against the odds and expectations (and wishes) of the majority of the crowd, they’re declared the winners. Which demonstrates a heroic victory of taste and common sense for the judges. And also means the night, which threatened early on to be a triumph of commercially ambitious efficiency over real potential, ends on a high.

By Zoë Herriot

Blood Red Shoes, the band formed by former Oedipus and Cat On Form man Steve Ansell, took part in a photo shoot in Oxford for Love Music Hate Racism, along with local stars Mr Shaodow, Bethany Weimers and Pete and Charlie from InLight.