The Libertines, Fibbers, York<br></br>Mudhoney, Academy, Manchester<br></br>The Darkness, Metro, London

Mod, grunge or astrophysics? You decide...

If Simon Schama ever gets around to making The History Of British Pop, he could do worse than call on The Libertines for period battle scenes from the Rock Wars. Everything here's a re-enactment, a reconstruction. You pick a year – 1964 (Mod), 1979 (Mod Revival), 1993 (New Wave of New Wave), 1995 (Britpop) – and these are the boys for the job.

Geordie-born, hamster-cheeked Pete Doherty looks like the son of Rodney Bewes playing Julian Casablancas in the yet-to-be-made Someday: The Story Of The Strokes. Sidekick Carl Barat wears a red guardsman's jacket of the kind last publicly sported by Menswear. (In case you missed the point, the merchandise has Mod targets on.)

Roughly the 13th inheritors this year of the NME's ludicrous weekly "Your New Favourite Band" mantle (The Parkinsons? So last week! Black Rebel Motorcycle Club? So week before!), the Libertines haven't yet managed to ride the hype rocket to stardom – they're still playing sweatholes like York's Fibber's.

Getting your clothes and vinyl from charity shops is one thing. Getting your ideas is another. Every Libertines song sounds exactly like either The Jam's "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" or The Smiths' "This Charming Man". To their credit, of all the current crop of East London guitar bands, The Libertines are the least likely to pretend they're from a trailer park outside Detroit and complain that their "womaown" has done them wrong. They're as English as Mike Reid (one member wears an Eng-er-land T-shirt), and it's good to hear words like "divvy" in a pop context.

They're harmless knockabout fun and Doherty and Barat do a nice bit of Thunders/Johansen (or, if you prefer, Rossi/Parfitt) back-to-back microphone sharing. But where are they taking us? Haven't we been here before? Mum, are we there yet? Last time I saw Mudhoney live, the third band on the bill were called Nirvana, and they were awful. If I'd had to place all my worldly possessions on which of the two was most likely to change the course of history, I'd be a hobo by now.

Ten years on, Mudhoney don't look very Seattle. With the exception of the unchanged Mark Arm, they all wear short, sensible hair and, hopefully as an ironic gesture, waistcoats. The guitarist is bespectacled, the bassist the spit of Jon Favreau. They're surely only in it for the bucks. What else is Arm gonna do for a living? (This is probably where someone e-mails to tell me he's become a highly-paid astrophysicist at NASA and only reformed the band for kicks). Not that anyone begrudges them: the Academy is packed with ageing grungers and younger Kurt fans who've borrowed their older brothers' Sub Pop collections.

The first two songs tonight are psychedelic epics with interminable wah-wah and cry-baby solos. This, it appears, is The New Stuff. It's tolerated politely, along with regular breaks for tuning-up (surely against the garage ethos). What we're really here for are the hits: "You Got It", "Suck Me Dry" and, of course, "Touch Me (I'm Sick)". The latter remains one of the best punk rock love songs ever: a vile, childish but hilarious reaction to AIDS-era paranoia ("I won't live long, and I'm full of rot/ I could give you, girl, everything I got ...") They encore with "In and Out of Grace", surely the only short sharp garage track to find room for a drum solo, which provides a reminder of one reason why Mudhoney will always, always be better than Primal Scream.

Irony ruins everything. Or, to be specific, the witless pursuit of ironic laughs. We're now so attuned to assuming that a band who raise smiles must have some sort of kitsch agenda that we've forgotten how to enjoy ourselves. This is why old skool metal band The Darkness, discovered over a year ago by yours truly, were initially dismissed as a joke band by people unable to distinguish between Irony and Fun.

The Darkness are, in every sense, a scream. They're funny, all right: Justin Hawkins, with his Freddie Mercury falsetto, David Lee Roth gymnastics and mid-song stunts knows all about entertainment. But a genuine, unfakeable love of this music (think AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, think AC/DC again) shines through.

If we're talking classic rock prerequisites, The Darkness have got it all. Winged logo: check. Bassist with Charles Bronson moustache: check. Ludicrously, pathologically flamboyant frontman: check. His quieter, better-looking brother on guitar: check. They also have riffs to die for and tunes to spare, as brand new track "Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker" demonstrates.

A year of non-stop gigging has seen them build a following that means every show is a lock-out, and a reputation as the best live band in London. At last, the world is waking up: the style rags are going crazy for them and Jo Whiley's got their new EP of songs with "Love" in the title on rotation. As someone once sang, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock'n'roll. The Darkness have the legs for the journey.

s.price@independent.co.uk

The Libertines: Norwich Arts Centre (01603 660352), tomorrow; Southend, Chinnery's (01702 460440), Tue; Southampton, Joiners (023 8022 5612), Wed; Bristol, Louisiana (0117 929 9008), Thur; Cardiff, Barfly (0870 907 0999), Fri; tour continues. The Darkness: The Kings Arms, Manchester (0161 839 7722), tonight; tour continues in October