Stephen KeableNME awards tours have been a great way to see bands on the brink of becoming huge, with relatively unheard-of names supporting one or two successful acts. And the 2010 tour was no exception.Stephen Keable

UEA

NME awards tours have been a great way to see bands on the brink of becoming huge, with relatively unheard-of names supporting one or two successful acts.

Previous supporting groups such as Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Ting Tings and Kaiser Chiefs have become hugely commercially successful shortly after or during the tour.

The Drums opened the evening with their brand of melodic 50s surf rock, with their penultimate track Let's Go Surfing, warming the crowd up nicely.

The Big Pink brought some rather deep electric rock, reminiscent of Primal Scream's more experimental material. Ending with Dominoes, which the crowd loved as the chorus has been used on the X-Box adverts recently.

Bombay Bicycle Club took to the stage with a front row full of teenage girls screaming their name.

Not exciting, but enthralling synth-laden poppy tunes followed with a hint of dub at times. Singer Jack Steadman's vocals popped and bounced over the eager crowd, with a hint of Patrick Wolf.

Brighton's The Maccabees rounded off the evening with spiky yet rather templated heavy indie-rock-by-numbers tunes. They made up for it with plenty of energy, bounding around the stage with plenty of clapping to get the crowd moving to their beat.