7

Professional Help

Bauer are another band local to Manchester that have obviously been putting a lot of hard work in, over 600,000 friends on their myspace page suggests they are either one of music's best kept secrets or they spend a lot of time spamming people! Judging by the number of people here today (which is well short of three figures, let alone six) I'm afraid it seems to be the latter. To their credit though they put on a very professional performance centred around lightweight indie that owes more than a nod to bands like The Smiths.

Visually they don't get very far beyond gentle swaying and coupled with the laid back feel of the songs it doesn't make for a very exciting performance. After three or four songs it all starts to sound very familiar and they are in danger of coming across as a one trick pony. The tunes are decent enough and the overall impression is of a very tight and slick band but at an event such as In The City where competition is fierce, they need to add something extra to really stand out and today they just don't have the magic ingredient.