Hard-Fi were unavoidable last year, and will be even more so this, with a sold-out tour around the corner. Why such significant success, with attendant number one album and Brit and Mercury nominations, is happening to them rather than a dozen other quite-good guitar bands isn't as mysterious as it seems. Zeroing in on the life of Zoo Weekly Man with a minimum of fuss, they're a Streets for people who think that the Streets are a rock critics' arty joke. They're making music for people exactly like themselves - well, almost like themselves; singer Richard Archer's feline prettiness is unmatched by any other male in the room - right down to the estuary inflections.

As they manfully work their way through this NME Awards show, only deviating from the album Stars of CCTV for a brisk cover of the White Stripes' 7 Nation Army, it's not hard to fathom the appeal of a group that does just one thing, but does it very well. The slogan on the backdrop - "Hard-Fi in operation" - gets it in one: constant touring has turned them into a live attraction that's pacey, yet rough enough to keep hard-knocks songs such as Cash Machine credible.

Archer has refined his scruffy-smooth persona to present us with the specimen of Staines-blokehood we see here - laddish enough to punch the air, but sufficiently travelled to parp away on a melodica, an instrument rarely encountered in the pedestrianised town centres where his songs are set.

If there were any ambiguity to songs like Living for the Weekend and Cash Machine, there isn't after the gravel-throated Archer explains that one is about cutting loose on Saturday night, the other about "being unbelievably broke". And yet, by aspiring to be neither big nor especially clever, they've turned out to be both.