@ Leith Depot, Leith, on Sat 2 Apr 2016

With Mods it makes sense – it’s a lifestyle thing. Northern Soulers, keeping the faith with their tunes, threads, and moves, likewise. But Britpop? Are there still people (for “people”, read “blokes”) whose Saturdays are about swaggering around to four-chord chant-alongs, arms aloft, spilling Carling down their Ben Shermans? I mean, even punks moved on eventually…

There are. Enough of them to make Alias Kid a vaguely viable proposition anyway. Bunch of Manchester lads, signed by Alan McGee after he saw an early gig – remind you of anyone? – they take the floor at Leith Depot’s wee upstairs bar, after three sweaty hours with an unnecessary four support acts, each one stoking the Dadrock fire a little more. The Rah’s [apostrophe theirs], The Wőlves, The Snuts, and a solo acoustic fella, who we “can find on facebook and twitter”, if he reminds us of his name – they all get the job done with tight, guitar anthems. It’s Kooksy here, Stereophonicsy there, Kings Of Leony to give it bit of a kick. If we’re lucky we get a whiff of Teenage Fanclub. The Wőlves are the pick, even if there’s too many of them for the stage. Their main man can holler, and they know their way round a melody.

Then it’s Alias Kid, identifiably the Englishmen in the room, who do nothing to rock the musical boat. They’re cockier (that’ll be the Manc), and their tunes are more distilled, but they just lead us up a different Britpop alley, the one marked Northern Uproar and Heavy Stereo.

They look right, of course, in a hotch-potch way. Bassist Nick Repton has a Mani-esque style and attitude, while their guitarist has a Glasvegas/Mary Chain all in black thing going on, down to the needless shades. And a combination of location and contacts means they have the usual suspects fighting their corner…

Shaun Ryder thinks, “They’re an exciting band and all good lads!” Tom Meighan of Kasabian thinks, “Alias Kid are the band rock and roll needs.” Clint Boon of the Inspirals thinks “they’re as exciting as Oasis, as soulful as the Verve”. Really? As soulful as that? Just wait here while I go smash my Otis Redding records.

The gap between what they promise and what they deliver is way too wide. McGee claims, “They are good working class lads in a sea of middle class mediocrity disguised as talent.” Yep, I’ll have that. Lead man Maz Behdjet tells us all to “keep supporting live music instead of staying in and watching the fucking Voice”. Amen to that too.

But after giving it all the right chat, they go shoot themselves in the foot. They play Anarchy in the UK – OK, although dumbly labouring the “rebellion” a bit too hard – then follow it with one of their own, Revolution Sometime, which flags that in forty years, we’ve gone from “ANARCHY!!!” to “hmmm, yeah, maybe we should have a revolution?” It gets a clump of fifty somethings pogoing, but it’s no Sleaford Mods.

Alias Kid are a product of their city and their thwarted, backward-looking times. On their own musical terms, hard to knock. If they (or any of tonight’s bands) are playing a pub near you next rainy Bank Holiday, fill your boots, neck your Stella, make like Bez. But there’s no revolution here, however much they’d like there to be.

Tonight is a blue plaque to twenty years of conservatism in British rock, in the middle of ten years of political Conservatism. Musical pants stay unswung. Establishment pants stay unsoiled.

And in the end, that’s an indictment on McGee. This man signed My Bloody Valentine, Super Furry Animals, even the maligned, but at one point brilliant cosmic scousers The Boo Radleys. How can he think that the future is still 1995? Is that what happens when you get old? Is this the piss-weak hair of the dog to McGee’s cocktails at number 10 hangover?

We should have been dancing on the grave of Britpop years ago, but in the thin musical soil of the 21st century, the bastard corpse just won’t stay down.