Ten minutes into The Family Rain’s headlining NME Awards Show gig at The Garage and all the rumours about the band sprawled over the internet suddenly come to life. Of course they used to be in a band called ‘Rock Pirates’ with the ability to play over three hours worth of Rock covers, and 80% of the time that’s exactly what The Family Rain’s show feels like.

To their credit the band has a strong fanbase which turned out to see them, and each song is greeted with warm recognition and a politely formed moshpit at the front of the stage. It’s not that The Family Rain make bad music – ‘Binocular’ is notably more melodic and individual sounding than most tracks on the album and gets one of the best receptions of the night. It’s just that with the leather jackets, beer-swigging, hair-swishing and requests for ‘a little more front light’ The Family Rain seem more preoccupied with the idea of being in a band than actually making music.

‘Pushing It’ is a carbon copy of any randomly selected White Stripes song and just reinforces the already solid impression that The Family Rain have arrived ten or so years too late, covering ground that’s already been covered, covered a lot, and covered really darn well. Closing their set with a brief ‘We’ve been The Family Rain…peace out’ is the ironically titled ‘Trust Me…I’m A Genius’. What ensues during their final song just about sums it up. A girl that’s climbed on someone’s shoulders swiftly gets a torch shone in her eyes and after strong words from security gets down, a stage invasion of roughly three people is quickly dissolved and frontman William’s stage dive sees him return to the stage in good time to finish the song.

You can’t really fault The Family Rain’s performance; the crowd was happy, they played some good songs well and they looked the part. But once you get past the idea of performance it all starts to wear a bit thin. The crowd head for the exits as soon as the band’s declared final song comes to an end, unexpectant or uninterested in a potential encore. The question remains if with a bigger catalogue of songs The Family Rain’s appeal will remain or if people will pass on seeing three hours of rock covers.