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Amongst those who have grabbed this premise with the most gusto are The Bottomfeeders, tonight playing as part of the regular Academy Unsigned series.

The band were resplendent in costumes, from the relative normality of the trombonist’s blond bob wig to the more eccentric flower-haired 50s bond girl fashion of bassist Mush, though beating them all was lead singer Natalie, whose utterly fabulous stars and stripes basque was only matched by her equally in-your-face attitude.

Yet style is nothing without substance and while there were a couple of songs that need a tweak or two away from the influences they were born of, The Bottomfeeders do have a fair few potential gems in their canon, not least of which is the tongue-in-cheek paean to the music industry’s obsession with rake-thin guitar bands, ‘Skinny White Boys’.

They may not be quite the finished product yet, but with the sheer power of Natalie’s amazing voice and their broad-ranging sound – an intriguing three-way mash-up of Siouxsie, PJ Harvey and the B-52s - as works in progress go, The Bottomfeeders are a top prospect.