The precarious success of the Libertines and Babyshambles has thrown up a new formula for pop infamy. Bands should talk openly about or perhaps even practice hard drugs. The front person should create new extremes of the shambles-as-genius chic perfected by Keith Richards. Crucially, they should suffer all this excess "for the kids".

The Others are enjoying an exploding media profile by fulfilling the criteria. The 26-year-old frontman Dom Masters is a friend of estranged Libertine Peter Doherty and sings darkly about "smoking bone in your back room". He gets kids into his gigs for free and sings - not quite ridiculously - that "This is for the poor, not you rich kids!" The band's manifesto places notoriety and the "message", over music and fame, which is just as well.

By conventional standards, the Others can't sing, can't play and look awful. They may go far. Master's bonkers band have perfected a proudly tuneless shamble that sees guitar solos played just that bit badly, as in early punk rock. The man himself subjects Cockney vowels to extreme torture. The result sounds like the Buzzcocks fronted by a market trader. And yet, they have something. Whether you'd want it is another matter.

Their best song - well, their only song - Stan Bowles, takes from New Order and draws romantic parallels between Doherty and the 1970s QPR striker. The bassist - who is possibly under 30 - has somehow contrived to resemble the Cure's Robert Smith in old age. The guitarist looks like a psychotic bouncer. Perhaps their fate will rest on whether mop-topped Masters can resist his career calling of fruit and vegetables. He rolls around the floor, submits himself to his army of grubby street urchins, then gets up and dusts himself down. Being a champion of the punk underclass is a very dirty job.

· At Norwich Arts Centre tonight. Box office: 01603 660352. Then touring.