YOU'VE got to be pretty confident of your local hero status to get away with breaking the unwritten rules of a festival show.

Luckily, Oxford’s own Ride have a devoted fanbase who will forgive them anything – including not playing their blistering breakthrough debut hit Chelsea Girl and giving an airing to new material.

Truth be told, there was nothing to forgive. Ride were at their typically barnstorming best on the Sunday night stage at Common People in South Park – close enough to their old stomping ground of Cheney School to merit a nostalgic mention.

While it might seem strange at first to experience their visceral wall of sound on a beautiful sunny evening in the great outdoors, their sound was undiminished.

Taking heavily from last year’s superb comeback album Weather Diaries, we were treated to Lannoy Point and Charm Assault, before being taken back to the heady days of 1990 with the live favourite Seagull – an all-encompassing assault on the senses. Taste also brought back memories of the band’s early impact, before the title track of last year’s LP – “Is this atmosphere just me or is the sky too blue? It’s too perfect. Something’s got to give” – created a moment of pure beauty.

Pulsar and Catch You Dreaming from this year’s Tomorrow’s Shore EP showed that they’re still mining a rich seam of new material but, inevitably, it was the old favourites that stole the show.

OX4 sounded perfect in this corner of, well, OX4, while Leave Them All Behind showed what a swaggering classic it is.

The band looked at home, as you would expect as this is their backyard. Whatever caused them to split 20 years ago is clearly in past and they seem a group rediscovering their powers and clearly comfortable in their own skin.

Vapour Trail provided a moment of lightness before their now traditional rendition of Drive Blind, featuring an extended barrage of white noise and guitar trickery, which they take as far as they dare to – before daring to take it a bit further.

Yes, local hero status is still firmly intact for Messrs Gardener, Bell, Queralt and Colbert.

MARC EVANS 4/5