Nine Black Alps, Met Lounge, Peterborough

That's not a dinosaur egg. It's the rebirth of grunge!

Nine Black Alps come from modern-day Manchester - a place where some things are cool, some of the time - but have a look and a sound which would have met with the approval of B&B, over a decade earlier.

There is a hunger for this stuff right now. Kids who were still pre-schoolers when Cobain blew his brains out... or someone did (he says, having watched that dreadful but oddly compelling Nick Broomfield film), are flocking in their fresh, internet-bought Nirvana T-shirts to see this foursome, causing full-house lockouts and crowdsurfing frenzies up and down the land. And it's a hunger which Island Records, having signed the band after only a handful of gigs, are eager to feed.

The Nine Black Alps phenomenon - if that isn't too grandiose a word at this very early stage - highlights interesting differences between pop culture in America and Britain.

Over here, perhaps because we're a smaller country wherein a trend can spread like wildfire, then burn out when everyone gets bored, things happen more quickly. We have revolutions and revivals, sudden deaths and cyclical rebirths. Over there, nothing ever goes away.

The first wave of grunge was heralded by Sonic Youth's documentary film, 1991 - The Year Punk Broke. Its title was utterly baffling on this side of the pond, where punk "broke" a full 15 years earlier, and where we'd spent the Eighties taking the punk ball and running with it into far more interesting territories, more-or-less oblivious to the fact that the Yanks were still plodding on with something rudimentary which they still called "punk" (involving post-Dead Kennedys acts like Black Flag and The Circle Jerks). This is why Green Day were initially regarded as punk revivalists in Britain, while back in the USA they were viewed as torch-bearers for a venerable tradition.

The same situation seems to have developed with grunge itself. And, accordingly, while we'd moved onto Britpop and trip-hop and other associated avenues by the time Kurt croaked, throughout the Nineties grunge really never went away in the USA, that strange land of dinosaurs where Pearl Jam still wade and groan dolefully in tar pits, and Staind, Nickelback and Puddle Of Mudd thrive with no natural predators.

The arrival of Nine Black Alps makes me wonder whether one of those enormous, irradiated Tyrannosaurus eggs, incubating in Madison Square Garden in the last reel of Godzilla, somehow found its way across the Atlantic and floated down the Manchester Ship Canal. The rebirth is upon us.

"We are the sweating people of Manchester." Singer Sam Forrest is wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Enthusiasm Attitude Pride". He's addressing a small-ish but packed venue on the edge of the Fens. "And we've come to sweat with you."

Acknowledging the applause after the first song, he adds "Thanks, kids." Kids? There's an irony here, whether it's knowing or otherwise. If Nine Black Alps, with their angelic, clean-shaven faces and grown-out bobs (à la early Ramones), are mere kids themselves: if they tried to buy a drink from the bar at one of their own gigs, they'd probably get IDed. (Maybe that's why Forrest asks someone in the crowd to pass him a JD and Coke.) Indeed, Nine Black Alps are so youthful that when they had to postpone their tour recently, it wasn't because they were in the grips of a chronic heroin habit or had sacked each other in a fit of pique, or fallen out with their supermodel girlfriends. It was because the singer had mumps. Bless.

They're not immune to the folly of youth. "Shot Down" is introduced as "our big gay pop song". Are Nine Black Alps prone to, victims of, or willing participants in the dispiriting Americanised trend to use the word "gay" to mean "lame, weak, crap"? Depressingly, I fear that they are.

In any case, NBA specialise in big pop songs (of whatever sexuality). Despite their esoteric, inscrutable name (which screams "art rock"), this is straightforward boy-girl stuff, with straightforward riffs to match. "Cosmopolitan" has a deceptively Interpol-ish intro, but within seconds it reverts to their standard sound (that is, dry drums, wet guitars and a polyp-throated roar). They've got the chops, in a crude kind of way: think Mudhoney, Superchunk, and ultimately Stooges: the gonzo end of grunge rather than the pained, strained stuff.

To be crass about it, if recent debut album Everything Is can be called "their Bleach", there's no evidence yet that they'll ever deliver an In Utero masterpiece, nor even a Nevermind best-seller. (Of course, the same might have been said of Nirvana themselves in their Sub Pop days...)

On their own limited terms, they're not bad. And if this is what The Kids want (again), then let them have it - I'm not one to hold a grudge. But I do find myself wondering: did Eddie Vedder die for this? More pertinently, should he?

s.price@independent.co.uk

Nine Black Alps tour the UK to October