This November, the arenas of Britain will host the Here And Now tour. It features a wan collection of 1980s celebrities - T'Pau, Go West, even Curiosity Killed the Cat. The bottom of the nostalgia barrel is clearly being scraped. Virtually the only 1980s phenomenon left unrevived is the fear of imminent nuclear war.
Against such a backdrop, it's difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the return of the Bangles. The all-girl quartet's music seems utterly of its time: airbrushed AOR ballads, MTV-friendly soft rock. Yet with interest piqued by Atomic Kitten's hit cover of Eternal Flame, the Bangles' first British gig since 1989 is packed.
It's endearingly low on slick production values. Mistakes are made and songs judder to a halt after a few bars. Additionally, the Bangles' music has aged better than anyone could have expected. You'd never guess from the overproduced bombast of Eternal Flame, but the Bangles' sound was rooted in 1960s west-coast rock and power pop, as tonight's spirited cover of Big Star's September Gurls makes explicit. Since their split, the same influences have been continually explored by indie bands, including Teenage Fanclub and, most recently, the Cosmic Rough Riders. As a result, the harmony-drenched jangle of Going Down to Liverpool and Hero Takes a Fall sounds surprisingly timeless.
Even the band's blandest hits are reworked to highlight their influences. Singer Susanna Hoffs slips slightly incongruous lyrics from the Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting for the Man into Manic Monday. Walk like an Egyptian - less a song than an excuse for a video featuring Hoffs in a belly dancer's outfit - segues into a frantic take on Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson. They end not with a crowd-pleasing favourite, but with a noisy version of the Seeds' garage-punk classic Pushin' Too Hard.
Eternal Flame draws the loudest cheers, but tonight's return to their roots casts the Bangles' career in a different light. They began with the best intentions but gradually gave in to commercial pressures. Their skirts got shorter, their music more anodyne, their sales better.
It's the story of 1980s rock in microcosm. At the very least, this nostalgia show comes complete with a moral.
