The Killers, The Kooks, Howling Bells, Passion Pit, Air Traffic - Hyde Park, London - Friday 26th June 2009

With a 4 month old baby, Glastonbury is obviously out of the question for this year at least. So, to get a safe, clean, nearby and non time consuming festival "experience", I headed for Hyde Park, for one day of Hard Rock Calling. Having already announced Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen as headliners (following in the vein of their usual super oldies like Aerosmith, The Police, and The Who), it was slightly surprising to see a third day announced, with The Killers and The Kooks headlining. A "full supporting bill" was also promised, which then disappointed as a few uninspiring bands were grudgingly announced about a fortnight before the show. In any case, it was a gloriously hot day, so a decent opportunity to sit in the park.

I arrived just in time to see Air Traffic's set on the second stage. They have obviously been writing a few new songs in the last couple of years, which sounded like they were very much in the same vein as their debut album. The set was a good mix of new and old - whilst they worked the crowd very well, and sounded OK, they didn't really inspire me. I have compared them to Keane before (with the improvement of adding a guitarist and some guitar based songs), and I would completely stick by that assessment on this showing. Interesting to watch, sounded nice, would fit really well on Radio 2, but no more exciting than that. Maybe my general disappointment when I see Air Traffic is mostly my fault for expecting something more "rock and roll".

After Air Traffic, I moved back into the sunshine of the main stage, where Passion Pit were playing. I had heard good things about them, and was interested to see what they were like. Overall, I was impressed - they reminded me of an interesting cross between Black Kids and MGMT - playing songs that combined indie rock with an element of a dance beat. All in all, they had a fair few decent songs, and sounded like a band that are perfect for festivals. Hopefully many people will walk past their sets this summer, and be suitably impressed. As well as that, I also thought they would probably sound incredible in a small indoor venue, their gigs are probably real party events.

An excellent Passion Pit set over, the next support band were Howling Bells. I have heard some (but not all that much) of their stuff, and was interested to see them live. Generally, I was reasonably impressed, but not much more enthused than that - I would certainly not be walking over broken glass to get to a Howling Bells gig any time soon. They were fine, they passed the time, the odd song stood out as being better than the rest - but they just didn't really grab me any more than that.

Next up were The Kooks, who predictably prompted lots of screaming from the zillions of teenage girls that had by now entered the venue. Putting The Kooks and The Killers on the same bill is always going to attract that particular demographic I suppose - this was generally a very safe, very middle of the road gig. That said, I was surprised how good I thought The Kooks were, they seemed to be well fired up for playing the gig, and they all bounced along merrily throughout. The set never really seemed to dip for the whole hour, and that length was just about right to not need to include any of their weaker songs. The girlies loved them it seemed, and I thought they sounded good also. They are now a band where you think "where do they go from here" - they are pretty big, but not likely to be selling out a gig like this as headliners, and with the added risk that people will just get bored of a third album of the same kind of music. We will see.

Finally, The Killers - it wasn't even dark properly when they came on stage, which meant that the show definitely improved in atmosphere as it went on and got darker. They started with Human, which seemed to go down a treat - one of the songs from their third album with which I'm not really very familiar. The set overall seemed to play most of that album (I could tell when a song started that I didn't know, that we were listening to something from the new album), so most of it got an airing. As well as that though, there was plenty of room for the stuff I went to see - basically their first album! The set seemed to abruptly switch after about an hour, when the band totally stopped playing any new songs, and turned instead to single after single from their first two albums. Almost like 2 sets - a "new album" set, and a "greatest hits" set. I preferred the second, of course, but the first wasn't half bad either.