When Will I Be Famous?

My Morning Jacket, Garage, London The Casanovas, The Monarch, London The Kings of Leon/The Sleepy Jackson/The Basement, Garage, London

My Morning Jacket, a quintet from Louisville, Kentucky, have released a well-received five-track sampler over here. It's good, but it's nothing compared with this astonishing show. Offering not so much a wall of sound as a wall of hair, the quintet are an unprepossessing bunch, but there's real subtlety behind their unlikely exterior. Jim James has a gorgeous voice, reminiscent of Wayne Coyne and Neil Young (except in tune), but his reverb-swathed tones are only part of the sound, used almost as another instrument alongside the beautifully judged guitar breaks and the propulsive rhythm section. They are evocative of everyone from The Flaming Lips to The Band, without sounding remotely dated or sacrificing their own style.

Somewhere, it's always a 1973 AC/DC show at the Woolloomooloo Legion Hall, and that somewhere is wherever the Melbourne trio The Casanovas are playing. Far grittier than their compatriots The Vines, the Casas are a booze-friendly boogie band to beat all, and when the handsome Tommy Boyce – who at times manages to get Angus and Malcolm Young and Bon Scott into his skinny frame – cracks into a tune called "My Good Looks", his brother Patrick, the drummer, possessor of the family's ginger gene, visibly cringes. Excellent entertainment.

The Kings of Leon are a Memphis family quartet in the scariest Southern tradition. The three Followill brothers and their cousin on lead guitar start nervously, but once you've overcome the suspicion that they're really the Stones cover band from the Dewdrop Inn, Anytown, USA, they're rather good. The singer, Caleb (yep!), pulls such tortured faces, you suspect someone's left something nasty on his mic, but they have at least three excellent tunes.

The Sleepy Jackson, from Australia, have just released a very good mini-album, sort of Avalanches-do-Dylan, but tonight they are atrocious. Gorgeous, languid tunes such as "Slow Dancers" and "Miniskirt" are needlessly crushed by volume, and their noise interludes are simply mediocre.

The Basement, from Belfast, are also Dylan acolytes. Hardly unpleasant, and even touching at times, their loving historical recreation induced in me an inexplicable urge to morris dance. That's tradition for you.