The main stage at the ABC can seem like an aircraft hangar when it isn’t packed. Concrete floors and sky-high ceilings do nothing for the pre-gig atmosphere on this night, with headliners Mew supported by Choir Of Young Believers. Even with a tiny cult status, COYB are clearly loved, and the hip musos even bother to shuffle down from their bored poses at the balcony when the group take to the stage, making the venue look at least half-full - far less, to be honest, than the band deserve.

With a voice spookily similar to that of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, COYB singer/songwriter Jannis Noya Makrigiannis is probably the most polite frontman to ever grace Glasgow. “Thanks so much for taking the time to see us,” he says earnestly after their opening song, and he repeats the sentiment throughout the set. They certainly aren’t head banging rockers, and this is a very restrained performance with the crowd choosing not to dance but instead to gaze at them reverentially. The lush orchestration, carried out beautifully by the band (including a member who looks like a ’90s Drew Barrymore migrating between keyboards and cello), complements Makrigiannis’s hauntingly pale vocals in tracks that sweep into one another culminating in an epic, aching crescendo.

Their gigs have been compared to ecclesiastical events often, and it isn’t hard to see why even aside from the name: they command a dutiful respect, and their simplistic lyrics in tracks such as ‘Next Summer’ (“next summer I’ll be back, I will return, I’ll break your heart when next summer starts”) make understanding and appreciation easy for the masses. Their involved, gothic sound is perhaps more suited to recording than performances in the first instance, but when you’ve listened to their album a few times, you’d be a fool if you didn’t experience them live. Even in an aircraft hangar.

Kat Stephen

With a sound that could easily be an echo of the soundtrack of some wilfully obscure cult alternative American movie, with at times forceful unadorned jazzy guitar and ethereal Lo-fi, hi-energy, hi-peculiar vocals, this 5 piece band are really opening up new boulevards to explore.

Some of the tracks on this debut album from the England/France-based group are a joyful, tangled mix of diverse and truly eclectic styles, others are a highly-listenable melange of edgy tracks in the vein of New Order, with others echoing the halcyon days of the 4AD label with touches of The Cure and The Smiths, in a very restrained French-intellectual kind of way.

These flavours are mixed with the slightest tinge of strange, sighing and strangled vocals that are simple and elegant in their parity. You can fill in the gaps between the peculiar beats, transparent drums and mellow guitars, as they leave room for your own imagination alongside that of theirs, which is a weird, shapely and transnational one. It uses African music influences, Tropicalia and a gentle wash of reggae to fuse a truly intriguing, oddity-made-spiritual effect.

The vocals are a mixture of verbal paintings of weirdness, idiosyncrasies and odd echoing snatches of distilled entertainment. This is post-pop art in places, more outside the Outsider Pop zone than you might think. The very moniker seems suddenly tiny and insufficient for GBG. Tracks like ‘L.A’, ‘Personal Lodger’ and ‘Police And Thieves’ are by turns strange, delightful and delicate, like a malformed peacock’s egg or a two-headed snake. The latter song is like Ska glimpsed through the bottom of a champagne flute.

There are peculiar staccato riffs of frailty and breezy sensibilities to be found on this album. There are vocal touches that remind of a French Bjork but without the bombast and with a healthy sup of style and cheek. Get Back Guinozzi!’s album is hard to classify, harder to possibly understand, but enchanting to listen to.

David Winstanley

The Oklahoma based four piece (with one member from Yorkshire) very fortunately do not attempt to play a weird hybrid of cock-rock and psychedelia. No. Instead, they create a bizarre, chanting, almost ritualistic pop music, heavy on pounding repetition and uplifting tunes. Opening/title track and lead single ‘Yes!’ chugs to life and piles on either multi-tracked vocals or multiple vocalists that build to a fuzzy guitar solo which validates the Flaming Lips comparisons, whilst ‘You Can Call Me By My Name’ powers on with a relentless rhythm that reminds me of the unstoppable force found on Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf, but with higher-pitched vocals and acoustic guitars. ‘Spring Song’, however, is as springy and upbeat as the connotations of the season, with playful horn sections. A curious little EP, and a band to keep an eye on.

Rob Evans

Man, beards are perfect in this weather. Anyway, Bearded Spotify is back and absolutley BULGING with tremendous new music, but like all good responsible adults, we’ve limited it to the best of the best, from danceable hardcore rock, to grunge hazy alt. country, with a good dollop of indie thrown in for good measure, this is music that delivers in waves of sonic thuggery.

Go on, try it if you dare to question me. Say hi to Santa for me, he owes me! He knows why!

The latter, as the album title Tall Firs Meet Soft Location prescribes, is the happy conjugation of two bands getting jiggy in the studio together. Their marriage is well arranged, with both descending from similar strands of the electric folk generation. But together, their folk musings are overpowered by a more haunting and bluesy style that both parties were probably not expecting.

With signature guitars jangling and echoing like a baby’s mobile made of vibraphones, Tall Firs have two Ecstatic releases under their belt already – including 2008’s Too Old To Die Young. But even just after one rotation of their Glass Rock outing, it feels in retrospect like their prior releases have always been nervously waiting at the bus stop for Soft Location to arrive.

Especially for the soulful whimper of Kathy Leisen’s vocals that reign and ache all over the album, a record that leaks vulnerable love songs and is emotionally stacked like a house of cards. Practically purring on tracks like ‘Possession’, Leisen lingers over acoustic twangs and a singular drumbeat that grows steadily more powerful, like an overwhelmed heart beating in the presence of new love. And when she hits the high notes on ‘U R Not Lonely’ (a song that should not have the text speak title held against it), it’s like the glazed cherry on the deep and juicy bass creeping below her.

All in all, Glass Rock create the effect of stumbling across a sticky dive bar filled with chewing tobacco, haggard wooden tables etched with the names of one-night-only lovers, and a forgotten bar singer who all at once, can sing till your heart breaks and then stub a cigarette out on its shards. On the outside, they appear to be tough and perhaps even a little hard around the edges but inside their core melts and runs like a chocolate pudding in an M&S advert. A beautiful effort.

Francesca Ronai

Performing complete albums accompanied by professional orchestras has become a bit of a fad recently. Efterklang did it at The Union Chapel, and then Grizzly Bear played The Barbican with The London Symphony Orchestra. 

This is a nu-jazz band that regularly performs with respected members of the classical community, yet have collaborated with talented soul singer Fontella Bass, and Roots Manuva, drawing the best from high and low brow.

Echoing this sentiment, The Roundhouse is like a cathedral for music. Its considerable ceilings slope upwards, and this Friday, worshippers murmured with anticipation. They were here to see a performance of the album “Man With a Movie Camera”, composed by The Cinematic Orchestra as a soundtrack to a silent Russian film of the same name, (an experimental 1929 silent documentary, with no story and no actors!).

Combining obscure cinematic themes with modern jazz (not exactly a fashionable pairing) might seem pretentious, but The Cinematic Orchestra achieves this with an air of cool accessibility.

True to form, two compositions accompanied by short films were performed as an introduction to the main performance. Then the jazz maestros arrived on stage for the third time − rapturous applause quickly morphed into silent anticipation, as the introduction to Man With A Movie Camera, (the film), played out.

Goose-pimple moments ensued as the first notes of “Dawn” precipitated over the crowd, preceded by “The Awakening Of A Woman” which brought huge cheers, and introduced the brilliant drumming of Luke Flowers, and the first sounds from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The sheer power and presence of live brass and string instruments was mind blowing as it washed over the room. At moments, the music resembled symphonic rock as guitar soundscapes featured heavily, then the space became a classical concert cum smoky jazz bar, with guitarist Stuart McCallum adding improvised nuance to proceedings.

Melancholy yet uplifting, the TCO sound combines the mystery of jazz and soul, with the euphoric intensity of the best rock and the beauty of classical music. Energetic noise fest this was not, but for fans of down tempo music it was pretty masterful.

The encore included songs from other albums, with guest vocals from the brilliant Fontella Bass (whose voice possesses the power of several JVC diggers). The highlight was Roots Manuva himself, arriving on stage in a dapper white suit. But this was no rap cliché as he delivered brilliant cutting lines over fantastic modern jazz.

As they departed, fellow Cinematic Orchestra fans exchanged knowing nods. This band continues to be Ninja Tunes’ best kept secret.

James Labous

Originally hailing from Cumbria, but moving to Manchester in order to greater their chances of success (hence the album title) these four New Order, The Fall and The Smiths fans have created one of those albums where every track is basically a future single possibility as all ten tracks are Top of the Pops joys, a bit like the younger brother of The Cribs.

Recent single ‘Telephone Conversation’ is a standout track, along with the ingenious ’18, 19, 20, 21, 22’, which has a quite memorable chorus, but again they are amongst a mélange of songs which all stand their own ground. Singer Jonny Swift doesn’t have a massive vocal range but it is perfect for this type of guitar dominant music which manages to elevate the songs into a dreamy state of consciousness while always keeping up the fast tempo beat.

‘By The Sea’ may be the track that the guys become recognised for, accompanied perfectly for by a black and white video of tour footage. Nothing on the album will offend, cause controversy, or make your mother shout ‘turn that rubbish off’; To The City, From The Sea is a record of simple pleasures, three minute pop songs, and grand sing-along choruses. There are many bands struggling to make it into the big time with this type of music, but the reason Beat The Radar have gotten this far is because they do it better than anyone else.

Peter Clark

Where the sound departs most tellingly from La Roux’s catchy-enough mimicry is in its dissonant dips beyond the sound of mainstream synthpop legends like Human League and Depeche Mode into the darker waters of acts like Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Tubeway Army.

Murkiness is deployed to best effect on tracks like the powerful opener ‘Cebe And Me’ with its discordant vocal over grimy, throbbing synth, and the dark electro beauty of ‘Heaven Was Full’ where the gruff glory of Eisold’s voice echoes the late great Ian Curtis.

Vocal duties are shared to good effect though, and the women sing to sweetly dissonant effect over the spirallying synthpop hooks of the excellent single ‘Life Magazine’.

Sometimes the poppy vibe goes too far, with ‘Love Comes Close’ and ‘Youth And Lust’ as major offenders. But on tracks like ‘The Laurels Of Erotomania’ and the closing ‘I.C.D.K.’ they manage to echo the glory of early Depeche Mode or New Order.

Norman Miller

My aversion to hype is now so refined that each time The Big Pink popped up on that TV advert, or an album review came into vision, I ignored it, childishly sticking my fingers in my ears and going “la la la la la”. Thanks largely to a blitzkrieg of promotion and the release of A Brief History of Love (an adequate debut album sporting an overused theme) the quality of the gig was being decided for me, before it had even started. So I kept my head down, avoiding every outside influence as best I could.

Gratefully, the supporting band set these anticipations aside giving me something else to think about. We Fell to Earth were a moping and moody Post Rock quartet with Math elements, stalked in the shadows by a droning, unsettling bass. Even though the bald singer sang (badly) like Phil Collins on the verge of a breakdown, they had clearly given their compositions ample thought and attentive care. And although not as well known, they proved themselves The Big Pink’s equals (seriously, check them out). Soon enough, on walked the headline dressed in their cyber Lou Reed chic. London was their last spot on the UK tour, a return to home.

I wanted to see The Big Pink because of ‘Velvet’. ‘Velvet’ is such an achingly good track and so unusual, like the product of some divine inspiration. It blows all the other tracks out of the water and their performance of it was a joy. The album title track was also well played proving they do have the odd reflective mood. Like being submerged in warm water or floating about in a Mark Rothko painting, each track blurred into the next preserving the hazy sensation. Their recent Radio 1 friendly single ‘Domino’s’ was what got the crowd bouncing and chanting in a sing-a-long. If you ask me, to close on their most popular single was a bit cheap, but I was the only one not ecstatically shouting along, so what do I know?

Without directly meaning to, The Big Pink bring shoegaze and noise art to the masses by adopting catchy refrains and by making the typical image of the oddball shoegazer much more sociable. Their textured hymns, made up of singing synths, electro beats and monster guitar distortion, transferred without blemish to the live setting. It took me a few days to work out that, aside from that generic crowd pleasing conclusion, their Electric Ballroom finale was strangely modest, short and razor sharp – possibly a reaction to their heavy exposure? I predicted much more improvisation and showing off but these cats appear to be shrugging off their rising fame. Once you brush all that hype away all that remains is the memory of a damn good evening.

Brendan Morgan

While headlining act The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster may be the main crowd draw tonight, opening act Bad For Lazarus are worthy of the admission fee alone as their scuzzy country-tinged rock doesn’t take long to grab you by the balls and put a knife to your throat. Long haired lothario Rich Fownes owns the stage with an uncompromising presence which both unnerves you but yet keeps you entranced as he screams out his vocals like an exorcism. Matching the physical propulsion of a heavy metal band or the kinetic energy of a snake down your pants, Bad For Lazarus can never be called sterile.

As the crowd suddenly seems to bleed into the room, the heat suddenly turns up a notch as the band keep roaring out their devil rooted garage rock music, far more heavier live than on record, and all the more better for it. The longer the set goes on the more heads begin to nod in unison as track after track the guys begin to slowly unwrap you from their dirty hypnotic hold since the thrashing began.

Tracks like ‘Fix My Fidget’ and the (sort of) softer ‘Old Rats On A New Ship’ will never exactly become sing-along tracks, but will for sure become set favourites for a band who easily flicker between two minute punk thrashings to psychedelic nuances that seem to make you trip for hours.

When you go to see these guys live, and you will, prepare yourself to leave as we left that night: soaked through to the skin, ears buzzing as the cells inside die, and covered in whiskey as a result of careless, if not a different class of crowd surfers. Be warned.

Peter Clark

But it’s a lot easier to pin Tom Ovans down: on every song here he sounds like late-period Bob Dylan, to a Stars in Their Eyes degree… except with a more destroyed voice, few interesting lyrics and the bleakest outlook I’ve ever encountered. Breakdown and Cry, Never Been in Love, Too Late Now… getting the picture yet?

To be fair, the cover is pretty cool in a primitivist way; there are odd blasts of melancholy Neil Young harmonica; and Ovans’ tales of working class Rust Belt life have a humanity reminiscent of Springsteen. But while Bruce often offers the hope of redemption, Ovans’ characters are damned from the beginning, shuffling through purgatorial landscapes of suffering – any sliver of hope the crueller when it is inevitably denied.

Get On Board was recorded in two days and is ultra-conservative, heartland rock in extremis, sticking pretty closely to a template of chugging country-rock with noodling electric guitar; and sparse, bleak acoustic ballads. Occasionally backing singers wail soulfully a la ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ – and it’s so nice to hear someone who can sing, just for a second…

Dylan, Springsteen and Young can take these forms and create magic with them, but in lesser hands like Ovans’, they can sound wearyingly played out. Years of sweaty earnest blokes like this singing earnest hymns about hard toil makes you pine for freaky degenerates of indeterminate gender, covered in peacock feathers and creating the world’s most effete electro-pop.

The ballads come out better in general, while the Dylan worship peaks with ‘Western Plains Blues’ (’the whole world is burning / the rivers have run dry’). Apart maybe from ‘Rainbows’, which is quite a sweet tale of a working-class kid discovering the bohemian life, this is pretty thin gruel.

Sorry you’ve had such a hard time, Tom – and you’re probably a really nice bloke. But you’re just bringing the rest of us down…

Ben Wood

I’ve been surrounded by pretty ridiculous air of self-satisfaction about the whole shebang; especially considering I discovered them through a free mp3 of their track ‘Surbubia’ distributed by rcrdlbl.com, a service subscribed to by umpteen thousand other people. But still I’ve been drenched in deluded smuggery about owning a copy of the Good Evening LP, long before it was given an official UK release at the end of August and having interviewed lead singer Ramona Gonzalez way before she was picked up by any of the mainstream press here or even in the US.

But by the time I reached Cargo for a long-awaited UK gig, I realised the reign of my own crate-digging ego was over. Nite Jewel had obviously caught on. The place was packed and the queue was extensive. And considering they were being released on and playing a No Pain In Pop event - the ear-feeding trend makers for all of London’s hipster faction from New Cross to Dalston and everywhere in between - well I was officially stubbing out the butt of my own precious (non)discovery that evening.

All that was left to do, was to throw my last strand of dignity out the window and sing along so obviously to every song that THEY would all know that I knew how brilliant Nite Jewel were long before THEY had even caught a whiff of their 8-tracked lushness. And I don’t even know the words - I should take pride in what a geek I can be sometimes…

In my defense, I do truly hold Nite Jewel close to my heart. Good Evening, with its lo-fi naivety and ethereal Italo-house affections is one of my most treasured possessions of the year. And I’d been waiting for them to make a London appearance for a long, long time (I mean super long, probably longer than a lot of others…oh I really need to stop.).

But it is as they say. Good things come to those who wait (a saying that could only have been thought up by the English, a nation of devout queuers). Sounding just as good as, if not better than their recordings, the album’s highlights poured off the stage, from the perverse ‘What Did He Say’ to the distinctly West Coast ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and even dousing us with ‘All Out of Order’ from the recent Italians Do It Better 12″.

Amazing sound usually seems to be the case at Cargo (so either I’m just lucky to be at the right gigs at the right time or their soundman practices a special kind of voodoo on the mixing desk) but mixed with the somnambular dream weaving flooding from the fingers and be-stockinged toes of Ramona and her compatriot Emily Jane plus the divinity of tracks like ‘Let’s Go (The Two Of Us Together)’, the only magic worth noting was theirs.

Francesca Ronai

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the new shit. The shit that matters, that grows from the cracks in the pavement and ends with a deeper, more conscientious scene.

Or I missed the point.

Opening track proper, ‘Hater’ is a callous mismatch of Minor Threat and Big Black, only without the underlying misogyny of proto-industrial Albini. Approaching this unprepared is a dangerous business; Clark delivers his lyrics with bilious fury – each line spat as unrelenting as a machine-gun fire, and with an unceasing aggression that makes Henry Rollins seem mild mannered.

Yet it’s not all about fury, Beat Your Kids is a blitzkrieg dictat, laid out in unquestionable clarity. From the waylaid beginnings of ‘Hater’ through to the relentless ‘Nu Jazz’ this record is not a compromise – it’s fucking brilliant.

‘I’m Gone’ begins with a syncopated beat, before being buried by a guitar line pursued by a tsunami; it’s as rough-shod as it is relentless. Clark’s unbridled punk is fresh in its primacy, swinging quickly from one reference point to the next this is an act that truly deserves to be seen live.

Clark’s fury coupled with the tape hiss evokes a time when music was purer; Streets of Rage’s aesthetic is the lasting impression here. Fuck the clichés Beat Your Kids is short but great. It’s honest, it’s effortless and it’s very fucking cool.

Will Metcalfe

The Glaswegian three-piece are pretty much impossible to pigeon hole into a category with their music swaying from full throttle edgy punk, to slabs of country twang, with good helpings of gentle indie janglings and pop sensibilities, Cuddly Shark leaves no one out as the exciting twists and turns of the record leave you a gasp, uneasy, and wanting so much more.

Opening with a frenetic ‘Bowl Of Cherries’, Colin Reid barks into the faces of all who will listen, and especially to those who refuse to do so. Cuddly Shark seem to have remembered the power of the original two/three minute pop song, but have just shoved a rock’n’roll rocket up its arse. ‘Woody Woodpecker’ really encapsulates this, fastly building a gentle rhythm of foot tapping melodies, with witty and sing-along lyrics, combined with crashing guitars and screams of joy, it is ultimately faultless. But you could say that about any song on here from ‘Instru-Mentalist’ to the musical equivalent of crack cocaine, ‘Shakey Baby’.

Their Weezer-meets-Pixies-meets-Fugazi music practically holds no limits, as proven in their stupidly awesome cover of Hoyt Axeton’s ‘Boney Fingers’ which just seems to come out of nowhere, much like everything else on the album. You will not know what type of song will be next to charge out of the speakers, from the incredible slice of punk ‘The Sheriff Of Aspen Bay’, or the 52 second long ‘Jamie Foxx On Later With Jools Holland’ which simply contains the lyrics “I heard you sing the worst song I ever heard”, and promptly ends.

But these guys aren’t pretentious; they simply play and execute a joy in their music many seem to have forgotten about. It’s so simple, and yet so exciting. To put it straight forward, Cuddly Shark have reminded me why I love music.

Peter Clark

Howie Beck’s fourth record is, apparently, the first recorded outside his bedroom and man, does it tell. Taking on a more cinematic angle, How to Fall Down in Public, is a record that combines major label-era Elliott Smith with the soulful slickness of Brendan Benson.

But remember, slick is not a synonym for perfect, and the airbrushed sleekness of this record can be a little galling. ‘Watch Out for the Fuzz’ is an inoffensive opening, but the shuffling bassline shares its lineage with Meredith Brookes’ ‘I’m A Bitch’ at least in passing, leaving something of a sour taste.

‘Flashover’ sweetens things up, evoking the effortless longing of Ed Harcourt, as back-porch banjos are pitted against finger snapping and a magnificent, brass-bound chorus. Beck’s vocal is lovelorn and lost, but uplifting with it and none more so than on ‘Don’t Put Your Arms Around Me No More’.

There is a sense of the dramatic here; Beck’s vocal is driven by shuffling percussion as his melancholia is achingly beautiful in the season of decay.

As the lilting country-lite of ‘Over and Under’ kicks in, Beck evokes the spirit of Arthur Russell in his most hicked-up state. Slide guitars lay across a lonesome vocal, before giving way to a chorus straight from a Rat-Pack tribute show. It’s this collision of culture, the calculated risk Beck performs, that makes the record so compelling. True, this might sound so well rounded you’ll be worried it could roll out of view, but How to Fall Down in Public is a polished record in the most positive sense.

As if to hammer the point home of being an alt. pop gem, Leslie Feist rears her lovely head on ‘La La La’ with typically luscious backing vocals behind Beck’s shuffling guitar. It is here allusions to Elliott Smith are (almost) justified.

How to Fall Down in Public is a record that will make you swoon, at times it’s guilty of being overly polished but somehow, as the record progresses it becomes less of an issue. Sure, there’s a clash of style and substance here but somehow Beck keeps a hand in with both. This isn’t perfect, ‘Beside this Life’ makes sure of that, but it’s a record to cherish. Now he’s out of the bedroom, Howie Beck’s got something to show the world.

Will Metcalfe