This year's NME rock tour sends out a message that rock hasn't quite finished exploring the territories it mapped out in 2006 and 2005. Opening act Mumm-Ra replicate the Killers' brash keyboard/guitar formula despite hailing from the unlikely rock capital of Bexhill-on-Sea. For all Killers frontman Brandon Flowers' studied eccentricity, it's difficult to imagine him waving a plastic duck on a stick, as does Mumm-Ra frontman Noo, although they will presumably have a bigger visual budget in the unlikely event they make it into stadiums.

The Horrors' 2006 blaze of hype seems to have died down lately and their hugely anticipated but underwhelming short set may explain why. The five black-clad grinning death's-head dolls make a wall of noise that could induce a heart attack in a visiting auntie. However, they have yet to stake their anti-pop reputations on a tune.

At least the tour comes up trumps booking the View, whose Hats Off to the Buskers debut nestles at No 1 - admittedly, in a quiet period - and who further a sense of a gauntlet being passed on: just as the Smiths' Johnny Marr gave a guitar to Noel Gallagher, Pete Doherty handed the View's tape to his A&R man. The Dundee hairies' unoriginal but effusive set echoes - but doesn't quite equal - Oasis and the Libertines. Still, neither Doherty or Gallagher were brave enough to pen a song like Same Jeans, an excitable confessional explaining how the rock lifestyle can make musicians smell.

It's left to Welsh rockers, the Automatic, to underline a sense of deja vu, although their rowdy punk-pop seems to be metamorphosing into metal. Perhaps that's the legacy of too many tours like these: in 2006, they were hitmakers with Monster; in 2007, monsters of rock.

· At Newcastle Academy tomorrow. Box office: 0870 771 2000. Then touring.