"We played here over two years ago," remembered Hard-Fi singer Richard Archer. "It was chaos then. Now we've just got more stuff that can go wrong."

So they have. Last night's sweat-stained, eyeball-to-eyeball with a frankly fervid fan-club crowd, staged to road-test new material and re-ignite old, did indeed see "stuff" go wrong, from guitarist Ross Phillips's guitar lead being pulled out by an audience member who was named and shamed by Archer, to instruments slipping out of tune in the heat and a distinctly wobbly sound.

Much more went right. The hits from the melodica-led Cash Machine, to the M25 underclass anthem of Living For The Weekend, via the elegiac Stars Of CCTV, sped by in a joyous blur of handclapping, air-punching and audience bellowing.

More intriguing was the new material. The forthcoming Once Upon A Time In The West (that's as in west London) is an almighty leap forwards for sole-songwriter Archer and from it Television, Suburban Knights and I Shall Overcome were richer in tone, sharper in vision and sound of a band whose time is patently about to come. "You've been f***ing great," concluded Archer after another frenzied reception to another new song. The feeling was mutual.