Avril Lavigne, Brixton Academy, London<br></br>Pink Grease, Brookes University, Oxford

The great kiddiepunk swindle

The things you hear on trains. There I was, upgraded to Weekend First a couple of years ago (eight quid, but it was a long journey), and whose voice should I earwig but Machiavelli Macphisto, MD of MegaCorp Music Multinational, barking into his cellular. "Find me a 17-year-old honey who looks like Buffy the vampire slayer, dresses like a stylist's idea of a skatepunk, sings like Shania goddamn Twain, and I swear I'll make us 20 billion dollars. We could buy Mozambique on the interest alone. What? Turn it into a golf course. Whites only." I'd forgotten all about it until I ripped open the Jiffy and the Avril Lavigne album fell out. "She's quite pretty", I thought, "but she looks kind of moody and misunderstood... OH, I see what they're doing there!" The whole Av-Lav shtick is "The Anti-Britney", and a lot of grown ups, and grown-up publications who oughtta know better (Rolling Stone, NME, The Observer) have bought into it wholesale, displaying a shameful dearth of scepticism. And so have a lot of kids. And kids these days... well, how can I put this? It's the perennial conundrum of cultural decline: do people buy Avril Lavigne records because they are stupid, or are people stupid because they buy Avril Lavigne records? It isn't just a marketing person's brainwave either (although it's proved a highly successful marketing strategy). Bovril Latrine is only too keen to set herself up as Spears' nemesis, famously announcing "I won't wear skanky clothes that show off my booty, my belly, or boobs. I have a great body. I could be Britney. I could be better than Britney." Don't think for a moment that this is because her straight-edge punk principles forbid it. It's because Av-Lav is a prissy little Christian who won't swear in songs because it might upset her mom. Indeed, Av-Lav is every mother's dream – no wonder so many mums have brought their tots along tonight.

And, like all Christians (as far as I'm concerned), she is a hypocrite. Not long after her self-congratulatory bitch-burst, she appeared on the front of Rolling Stone wearing a tartan miniskirt and a body-hugging, torso-baring black mini-vest. Tonight, before "Naked", she tells us "Anyone out there who wants to get naked can!" Careful, Avril, someone might tell Mrs Lavigne.

Lavigne's antipathy to women who show their bodies is also, of course, a glaring signifier of social class. It barely needs restating – does it? – that the kiddiepunk uniform is an even more obvious signifier of class. Tonight, standing there in front of her hand-picked blokeband, she wears a camouflage T-shirt, black combats with a big keychain hanging from them, and swishes her lovely silky hair (because she's wurrrth it).

You don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to destroy the myth of autonomy. Lavigne was discovered and moulded by impresario Antonio "LA" Reid, and her dire soft-rock anthems have been written with the, cough, "help" of seasoned songwriter Clif Magness (Barbra Streisand, Sheena Easton, Wilson Phillips). The fist-chewingly awful sub-Pink/Alanis angst of the lyrics might be Avvy-Lavvy's own work, but that's nothing to boast about. As a performer, she's an empty space. Without a guitar around her neck or a choreographer on the payroll, she just stands there, occasionally adding a weak-wristed air-punch to emphasise crucial lines.

It doesn't take too long to realise that an Avril Lavigne show is actually a Britney Spears show (pretty girl, big budget) with all the good bits (killer tunes, spectacular show, state of the art production) taken out. There's no deceit with Britney: you know exactly what you're getting (and of course, Britney is a hundred times more rock'n'roll than Avril will ever be). Maybe, in just one twisted sense, Avril is totally punk: the mass marketing of underground ideals was always part of the Sex Pistols agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, The Great Rock'N'Roll Swindle is complete.

"They're either the worst band I've seen in my life... or the best." A random, passing stranger, or convenient journalistic device (delete according to taste) has just seen Pink Grease, but still can't quite believe it. An inspired, lunatic sextet from Sheffield, Pink Grease sound like a chaotic collision of prime New York Dolls, Roxy Music (Eno-era) and The Cramps (any era). But it's the visual spectacle which engages the senses as much as the noise overload. Blond singer Rory is a born show-off with an Iggy-like penchant for taking his clothes off. On "Nasty Show", the lead-off track from their forthcoming mini-album All Over You, he hollers "I wanna die fucking you!" in a silly Lux Interior vibrato, while guitarist Steve, a pale-skinned brother with a ginger afro, screams along in an even sillier falsetto. One of them, bassist Stuart Faulkner, has a haircut straight out of the Bay City Rollers, and a name to match. He dresses like a sailor. Saxophonist John – yes, they have a saxophonist (but think the crazy parps of Manzanera, not the soothing tones of Kenny G) – looks like the sort of person who lurks around docks waiting for sailors. At a climactic moment, they kiss each other. They have their own Eno in "machine" operator Nick, a computer boffin/nerd (again, delete according to taste) who has created his own synthesizer: a cumbersome-looking contraption consisting of a mixing board covered in twiddle-able knobs, and a touch-sensitive strip which he strokes with a pen-like attachment, like a cross between the Beach Boys' theremin and Rolf Harris' Stylophone. Oh, and the drummer is a schoolteacher.

In a world where Avril Lavigne and her paymasters have got everything sewn up so neatly, thank the Lord a band like Pink Grease is here to make things messy.

s.price@independent.co.uk

Pink Grease: Upstairs at the Garage, London N5 (020 7607 1818), Tue