When Will I Be Famous?: Burning Brides, The Apes, Soledad Brothers

Anyone over the age of 25 might well greet the Burning Brides with a yawn of: "Been there, seen that, bought the T-shirt – and these days I'm washing the car with it." But although the Philadelphia trio will certainly evoke memories of the first time you heard Nirvana's Bleach (not to mention the second, third and 50th times), they don't deserve to be dismissed.

Their debut single, "Glass Slipper", is a brief, invigorating slice of punk noise, and a band who write songs such as "Plank of Fire" (the next single) and "Stabbed in the Back of the Heart" can't be accused of pretension. Though the set lasted a patience-challenging 55 minutes – variation is not a strength – they have plenty of spirit and not a few decent tunes. And a singer called Dimitri Coats and a bassist named Melanie Campbell. Mel C, see?

They're positively middle of the road compared with The Apes, from Washington DC, quite the scariest band since the Butthole Surfers were terrifying punters back in the Eighties. They are crazed and horrible and therefore highly recommended. The singer, Paul Weil, directly challenges the amused audience in the best tradition of Iggy and Morrison, while his cohorts keep up a barrage of noise owing as much to Iron Butterfly's Sixties horror In-a-Gadda-da-Vida as anything more modern. There is no guitarist, but Amanda Kleinman, rather innocent-looking under her wrestler's cape and mask, instead beats up an organ to doomy effect. The tiny Arts Café isn't the ideal spot to enjoy them – that would be at the wedding reception of a couple you detest – but The Apes are well worth suffering through.

Equally arcane and limited in appeal are the Soledad Brothers, from Detroit, but their jones is the blues, the proper Delta blues, as played through the years by middle-class white people. Taking their name from the Black Panther George Jackson's posthumous autobiography (right on!), the trio, tonight augmented by a second guitarist, lovingly recreate the sound of a time before the invention of the Marshall stack, let alone of the cassette recorder on which they seem to have taped their extremely rough live album. Their version of the venerable "Preacher Blues" is outstanding, and their best original tune, the Stones-y "Teenage Heart Attack", is irresistible. The singer, Johnny Walker, knows of what he speaks – he's training to be a doctor.

As satisfying as it is predictable, this is music played by and for fans of the genre and, as such, cannot be faulted.