An interesting development on this. My drummer and I went to see another Basschatter, Elias Mooseblaster's band a few weeks back, and both felt that, overall, the two bands were probably fairly close to each other in ability, but they had the edge in that the band completely owned their songs, something we put down to it being their own material, and not trying to put their own personality into someone else's work (our theory anyway).
This really sealed it for us, and on Wednesday, the first time after holidays and other disruptions we have been able to get a full rehearsal, we broke the back of two new original songs, and it had exactly that element that was previously missing.
All we have to do now is polish them up, and get some of our more interesting covers to have the same feel in time for our gig on 17th October at the 100 Club supporting Marcus Malone!