Cohesion is a brand new festival in aid of Kosovo, so it's a given that all the bands who forfeit their fees to play are good eggs. But can they put on a good show? The tricky site does them no favours. Platt Fields Park, situated by Manchester's "curry mile", is idyllic enough, but the close proximity of the three stages means there was often a sound system clash. Worse, someone who possibly had never attended a festival before, installed more fairground rides than beer stations or toilets, leading to Soviet-style queues for the essentials.

Luckily, most of the acts rise to the challenge. Stephen Fretwell and I Am Kloot do well, but best in show is Graham Coxon, still looking like a teenage skateboarder. Never normally a man to deliver full sentences with a smile when one syllable and a scowl will suffice, today the ex-Blur guitarist is as sunny as the weather. Coxon's abilities as a balladeer are often underappreciated, but he delivers a twitchy yet lovely version of Bittersweet Bundle of Misery.

Just before Badly Drawn Boy headlines with a set of new songs, a young Kosovan girl is ushered on stage. This sort of thing runs the risk of going a bit Michael-Jackson-at-the-Brits, but hearing how she was shot 16 times during the war is a cause for reflection rather than a stage invasion by Jarvis Cocker.

As Elbow's Guy Garvey notes, wryly dedicating Leaders of the Free World to Tony Blair, Cohesion isn't the only show in town this weekend. Up the road, the bitching and back-stabbing is beginning at Labour's annual get-together. The contrast between the two events is marked. One is a genuinely uncynical attempt to effect positive change. The other is the Labour party conference.