If you’re un-cool enough, the theory runs, the cycle goes all the way round and you become

unbelievably cool again. How else can a band this irretrievably naff in every way – five hugely

grinning, prodigiously sweating guys in their

middle, ahem, youth who wear dark glasses, throw ridiculous ROCK! shapes and haven’t been clothes shopping since 1987 – come this close to snatching the show from the White Stripes’ quadruple-fisted grasp? Well, The Dirtbombs are clearly too engrossed in the unabashed joy of being, er, dirtbombs to worry about such fleeting am-I-hot-or-not?-isms. They bang out the filthiest noise imaginable: sleazy peepshow-bar blues, garbage-can Detroit rock, with so-ugly-they’re-beautiful basslines and not one but, hey! two drummers (all good bands should have two, we are becoming increasingly convinced).

The casual postmodern hauteur of The Von Bondies is the polar opposite to the ‘Bombs’ messy, goofily pheromonal come-on. But that’s not to say they’re bloodless. Their bassist and guitarist may be two Daniel Clowes heroines, all precisely-drawn, drainpipe-trousered chic and coolly straight faces, all the more impressive as they rip vicious surf guitar and gargantuan blues from their instruments with fuck-cares dismissiveness. But booming, earth-splitting drums (block-rocking Motor City via the pulverising pummel of The Who), tunes that are singleminded, locomotive and absolutely relentless from start to finish, and their lead singer’s wracked, torn-voiced wail mean they’re ultimately as blood-filthy as they are immaculate, wolves in skinny-rib wool suitjackets.

They’re a lot of things The White Stripes should have been, in fact. “I’m Jack and this is my sister-bitch Meg,” spits the man everyone has come to see, dressed in skinny devil-crimson from head to foot - and the female half of pop’s most famous ‘sibling’ act, peeping out from behind a huge brand-new drumkit, grins suitably enigmatically in reply. And the new kit, the new “uniform” tops (synthetic electric red, bright as blood) and a palpable new self-awareness attest to The Stripes’ recent arrival at the toppermost of the poppermost. So does the fact that Jack White’s painfully honest, life-or-death blues howls – as final, point-blank and desolately lonely as epitaphs on their three amazing records – are yelled along to tonight in distinctly non-lonely, populist, mindless-fun fashion by everybody here. We’re not at Witnness anymore, Toto.

And they do sound amazing – Jack wailing like a preacher, each phrase getting its own gasp of breath, Meg’s familiar pound-and-smash speeding and slowing as his fervent blues-gospel erupts and subsides – but there’s a new, just-discernible play-acting element here now. We hear it in Jack’s convulsed squalls (“What accent is that he’s singing in?” someone wonders. “Mexican?”) and we see it in Meg’s recently-arrived, highly mannered drumming style, all poses and ostentatious wrist-flicking (“She drums like a girl,” someone else notes without irony). And frankly, it detracts immeasurably from this most pure and basic of noises. Roll on the swift exit of the hype, and the subsequent re-appearance of the 4-real, no-lie White Stripes, who are merely one of the best bands on earth.