Pop: More than a numbers game

1997 marked the death of Britpop's party, which made it a good year for Six By Seven. The Nottingham-based band had taken six years to forge their corrosive but beautiful noise, a sublime antidote to Britpop's glib chirpiness and complacency.

Then, last year, they released the plangent single "European Me", signed to Beggars Banquet and floored anyone who caught them live. "It was a bit of an opening year," says singer-guitarist Chris Olley. "With bands like Mogwai coming up and Spiritualized and The Verve pushed to the forefront. We were unsignable during the Britpop period. People used to come to sign us, see how we looked in our dressing rooms and be horrified. But there wasn't any rush. Everything we do seems to take a while."

The Things We Make bears this out. A startling, thick ear of a debut album, somewhere between the ambient intensity of Mogwai and the blissed- out soulscapes of Spiritualized, it frequently veers towards the epic. "It's just pleasing to the human ear to hear something build," says Olley. But there's no prog-rock flab. A keen sense of focus keeps even a down- and-dirty groove like "Spy Song" sounding lean. All nine minutes of it. "You've got to keep it tight," says guitarist Sam Hempton, "keep it under control, never let it dissolve into a mush. Even if we're just playing one note it can get really intense."

It's bruising stuff, but Six By Seven are more than just frowning hard nuts. There's a tenderness to a song like the waltzing "Oh! Dear" which proves them adept at writing coruscating love songs too. "As in 'Oh dear I'm in love'," Olley nods. "I wanted to write about how it feels, how stupid it is, when you fall in love with what other people consider to be a pretty ordinary boy or girl."

Lesser bands might have produced something adolescent and whining here, but Six By Seven crank "Oh! Dear" up to a steaming pitch that sounds genuinely searching. Its forceful questioning is matched by two songs in which Olley worries over his reasons for making music. On the ominous brute symphony of "A Beautiful Shape", he howls, "The things I make, they have no use, but they have the most beautiful shape." The spiralling "88-92-96", their first single proper, took a wounding stab at this question. "I was trying to come to terms with when I get up there and sing," says Olley. "What gives me the right to do this? Why am I standing here? The band would say, 'Yeah, but you do it so well!' I'd be like, 'Nah, it's bleeding horrible!' It's like taking your trousers down in front of people."

The live experience shatters any worries that all this fretting might turn in on itself and become shoe-gazing angst. It's full-on, glorious catharsis all the way. "It takes a lot out of you," nods Hempton. "At the end of a gig I'm sodding knackered. You just want to have a lie down afterwards."

Oxford Zodiac (01865 726336) tonight; Brighton Concorde (01273 606460) tomorrow; London LA2 (0171- 434 0403) 9 June; Sheffield Leadmills (0114-275 4500) 13 June