Battle of the bands

Some people thought This Is Spinal Tap was for real; watching this documentary, you may wonder if it's a spoof.

Dig!, which won a prize at Sundance last year, follows two retro indie bands with a penchant for wordplay, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Lead singer of the latter outfit is Anton Newcombe, a wild-eyed fellow who talks a lot about love but has a genius for making war, whether on fellow band members - "You f***ing broke my sitar!" - frazzled managers, hapless individuals who've paid to see him perform (you actually hear one bloke getting kicked in the head) or The Dandy Warhols themselves.

Director Ondi Timoner started filming in 1995, when TBJM and The Dandy Warhols both seemed to have an equal chance of making it big. But where Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor is resigned to becoming a corporate whore, Newcombe has a yen to stay clean.

He's a heroin addict, but where success is concerned, he'd prefer to say no. Which doesn't stop him bitching like hell when the Dandies ( onetime friends) go down a storm in Europe. Among other things, he feels they've ripped off his sound.

Battling bands may not be everyone's cup of tea. For a while, music documentaries seemed determined to accentuate the positive (think Buena Vista Social Club or Down From the Mountain).

But Dig! thrives on dysfunction - with a twist. Taylor, made to look somewhat smug and dull by comparison with Newcombe, is the film's narrator, and so was clearly happy with its slant. If Newcombe is Peter Pan, Taylor is more Wendy than Captain Hook.

At no point does he - or anyone - question Newcombe's genius. No one points out that it's a bit rich of him talking about people ripping him off, when he has swiped so much from others, including The Smiths (their attitude) and The Jesus and Mary Chain (their blissed out, velveteen sound). Despite the bias, Dig! works, perhaps because this terminally gorgeous man really is as charismatic and compelling as he thinks.

Timoner manages to track down Anton's parents - his mother, who clearly doesn't understand him, his dad (a schizophrenic), who understands him only too well. An inter title explains that, a year after the interview, Mr Newcombe killed himself on his son's birthday.

Between them, the Dandy Warhols and TBJM have created some very catchy tunes, but it's this bleak fact that proves impossible to dislodge from your brain.

Dig!
Cert: 15