Two years ago in this newspaper, Alan McGee decried the "bedwetters" of modern pop. Where, he asked, were "the characters" and "the great rock'n'roll music I grew up with?"
Since then, McGee's label Poptones has done a very good job of re-creating - and, at best, revitalising - that music. Cosmic Rough Riders relocated the sound of Buffalo Springfield to strife-torn, run-down Glasgow; more recently, Sweden's Hives have put a postmodern twist on 1960s R&B. With the Bellrays, however, McGee has got it very wrong indeed.
McGee is one of the music industry's few true fans, someone who actually lives rock'n'roll (in the past, rather dangerously). The downside is that very often, his good-intentioned rock'n'roll heart gets in the way of logic.
One of McGee's favourite albums is 1969's Kick Out the Jams by Detroit revolutionaries the MC5. His former charges Primal Scream used to cover its blistering title track; his latest band offer a half-baked remodel of the entire album.
The Bellrays (who are Californian) are so rooted in the MC5 it is embarrassing to watch. Their solitary twist is gigantic-afroed singer Lisa Kekaula's voice, which is somewhere between Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, but hasn't any of the bite - or indeed character - of either. She merely reinforces the Bellrays' air of a tired, blustering, pathetic museum piece.
There were probably scores of bands like this in Detroit, 1969-72, desperate to be caught in the slipstream from MC5 and Iggy Pop's Stooges. They were probably just as hopeless but at least they had context - they weren't scrabbling around in ideas that were exhausted 30 years ago.
Even in 2002, the year of the Pop Idol karaoke embarrassment, the Bellrays' paucity of inspiration is shocking. And that's not just musically: even their pronouncements between songs ("Are you ready, people?") are lifted from the MC5's "Are you ready to testify?"
Their desperation is evident when bassist Bob Vennum leaps and yells "I love it!" in an attempt to stem the trickle towards the door. The Bellrays are high on energy - they move about more than the Strokes manage in a whole tour - but they are not blessed with decent songs. Sorry, Alan, but most will prefer the bedwetters.
· The Bellrays play the Garage, London N5 (020-7607 1818), tonight, then tour.
