So who’s this barging past and swearing the cunting fuck out of the space where we’re queuing to get in? Five minutes later, there she is again, onstage and spinning 50% of the vocal gold as part of Peggy Sue. Their music revolves around these twin blues voices, Rosa and Katy’s similarly tuned, differently pitched tones calling up old ghosts and burnt up romances (there’s a drummer too, but he has a silly jumper and moustache combination and warrants no further mention). Even the songs that end stamping up the flames sound like laments – all is bruised, mournful, coated in dust. The interplay between the spidery dual guitars and the haunted, fraying vocals is offered under rare levels of control, hypnotising in the space between mannered and about to break. In other words: pretty fucking good.

If the Thekla crowd open their legs any wider there’ll be feet out of portholes, directing shipping. Wild Flag turn the delirious expectation into curly-toed satisfaction with as much difficulty as boiling an egg, partly through shit hot garage rock, and partly through being unbelievably, stinkingly cool. Watching this on mute would be just as good (if, you know, slightly creepy): leg kicks on the opening chords from Carrie Brownstein and Mary Timony, grit and brass from world’s-coolest-housewife Janet Weiss, Blondie-like keyboard presence from Rebecca Cole, and constant goofy grins between them all. The music they play is perfect for their peacock feathers – uptempo sass grinning on Nuggets-y, new wave goodness brings strutting, feline moves; the longer, Doors-y jams bring open-mouthed, kneeling worship and shears it of all male wankery smell. You can be all things to all people – knowledge of the band members’ collective years spent in other shit hot outfits (Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi, oh, you bloody know) allows you to ascribe wisdom to their lopsided beaming, but the force that hits you like a truck tonight is the still-consuming electricity of being in a band, being free, and having stupid amounts of fun at the same time. Wild Flag play plugged in and glowing, then scarper like the best gang in town, no problem.

Like reading Stephen King and masturbating eight times a day, it’s probably best to get some things out of your system early. For all that Islet have been (deservedly) lighting those newhotblogbuzzband bulbs recently, into the national press and beyond, it’s the Cardiff band’s past lives in uberindie bashers such as Attack + Defend and Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club that gives things a sobering counterpoint. So much of Islet feels like an attempt to move beyond indie, of ideas splashed up the walls as quickly as they bubble up. If you can make a noise you can make a song, so why not cram it with cranky organ, whoops and shouts and every member smashing cymbals? Two previous mini-albums have shown no urgent attempt to replicate the kinetic nature of their live shows – imagine an exorcism of mad-eyed charmed snakes – which is fairly sensible: by stretching out and stitching together a hundred rehearsal room experiments and jam session fragments they’ve not necessarily reinvented the wheel for this debut album, but have made it pretty fun to take a ride on.

Previous single ‘This Fortune’ is a pretty good bridge between old releases and now: its dreamy organ beatdown melds the crackle of ‘Celebrate This Place’ to the haziness of ‘Wimmy’, and it kicks like a kung fu mule. It’s the high watermark two in ‘Illuminated People’s killer opening one-two: ‘Libra Man’ arrives on mechanized crunches and serpentine wisps of backing vocals before splurging on swollen layers of desert prog organ. You might see its nine minute length as some sort of statement; more likely that’s just the way it tumbled out.

Unforced personality is the dominant theme here. The three main vocalists make noises worthy of their own action figures: from choirboy weirdo (JT) to agitated meths tramp (Mark) to cooing banshee (Emma, slightly overused if we’re being scrupulously honest), they spar against the musical clamour with equal weight. On ‘Entwined Pines’ they take turns, blend together and jump in front of each other in equal measure. On ‘A Warrior Who Longs To Grow Herbs’, it’s Emma’s gig, as slow, rumbling bass makes lushly cinematic waves, pierced by a plaintive “please… come… home” refrain. For a fair whack of the album, downed tempos underpin songs that nail moods rather than circular structures: see the stop/start twinkling videogame rush of ‘Shores’, or the capsized, quiet guitar blues of ‘We Bow’. Easing off the intensity is alright when your sonic palette is thriving underneath.

It’s not perfect – ‘Filia’ is pretty formless and meandering, ‘What We Done Wrong’ lapses into alt rock guitar and weird baggy drum patterns – but ‘Illuminated People’s ideas gush is confidently bloodyminded, helpfully finding gold while following its own path. As ‘A Bear On His Own’ closes things, veering from lolloping fairground bounce to chanting and rising anxiety chords, before popping like a bath bubble, the freewheeling impression left is the fun you can have, just because you can.

Do you speak guitar? Could you parse the seemingly identical layers of lofi fuzz to reveal three separate young bands tonight? Funny how tiny differences equal big outcomes: every act on this bill deals in scrappy noise to some degree but only one steps above the wash to become anything more than vaguely enjoyable scuzz. Basically, you need to away the fact that JOANNA GRUESOME ARE FUCKING BRILLIANT, and effortlessly better than openers Mowbird, whose angular zeal is fine enough, if a little unmemorable, and headliners Black Tambourines, who jitter through tight indie that arrives frayed and febrile. The latter band are like some modern day Merseybeat combo, head wobbling and ooh-ing over songs that strut awkwardly towards pop greatness but never quite get there. Their rush of breathless clattering is a benign tonic while it lasts though, and comes with plenty shy boy charm.

 So why are Joanna Gruesome so good? All their imperfections are their strengths: anything mumbled against them in the crowd gets too easily batted back. They’ve got a singer who murmers like she’s crippled with stagefright and/or boredom? Well fuck you, it’s another layer of perfect lofi guitar noise. They’re a bunch of skinny legged kids who look like they can barely dress themselves? Well fuck you, they’re the kids who’ve won through knowing no separation between DIY moshpit, unselfconscious love of music and making a racket yourself. Their version of Galaxie 500′s ‘Tugboat’ is a good calling card: verses that are sleepy, dreamy, stumbling into crashing sections that junk the choruses for howling guitar waves. JG originals are sweet too, sometimes literally: boy/girl vocals (estimated first shave date for male singer: 2017) are honeyed but not cloying, lost in six string distortion that’s a brilliant crush of wailing, stabbing notes and bullseye melody. “Twee Sonic Youth” is too trite – Joanna Gruesome are cute and rough, gangly and huggable, with rocks in their cardigans. Start stalking them now.

Tempting to think that Talk Normal were handpicked by Wire to open proceedings with the kind of awkward experimentation the latter group long left behind, but in reality (a) Wire still hide a lot of sharp corners in the pretty conventional songs played tonight and (b) Talk Normal’s racket is totally, completely great. Comprising two Brooklynite ladies (some middle aged men in the audience will alter congratulate them in a surprised manner), it’s a noise dominated by rhythm and squall rather than melody, with Andrya Ambro’s compulsive drum beat putting needles under Sarah Register’s piercing guitar and one-finger keyboard. In their starker moments they conjure up bracing no-wave heroines Ut; in the urgent call and response yells and drawn out guitar work they just sound fucking cool, like classic NY rough edges party stars. Devastating, even in grey leggings.

There’s some obvious signs of age as Wire start, though most of them are in the audience. Despite Shouty Man In Crowd, they don’t play I Am The Bloody Fly, though chucking in Another The Letter as your second song is a sweet deal; 1978′s niggling romp sounding box fresh, and unspoilt by it’s main riff being played by a session guitarist who looks he was stolen from Kurt Vile’s backing band. There’s very little played tonight from their first three albums, the ones that saw Wire ricochet from scabrous, crossword clue punk to gloriously mutated art rock in a ridiculously short space of time. This is a fine attitude, and though the bloody minded-ness is deflated slightly by playing two flipping encores, their shark-like aheadness leaves even less dazzling songs imposing and weighty still. Please take, from this year’s Red Barked Tree, thrums with dignified melancholia, thanks to an excellently stoic vocal from bassist Graham Lewis (good facial contortions too). 1988′s The Boiling Boy adds guitar layers so subtly it’s a thrill to be suddenly caught in the crashing, krauty finale. 1979′s Great Lost Single Map Ref. 41°N 93°W moves from perfunctory version to electrifying version once Colin Newman’s vocals start yowling at the song’s end. Always their presence is physical and jarring, a fact jabbed into your temples by a slowly steamrollering Pink Flag, a roll call of buried bodies set to stately explosions. Newman follows each glowering number, each minute long thrasher, with a steady swipe of his onstage iPad. They keep going, two fingers forever.

Funny to think of the Truckers when they started. They’re an unshakable Cardiff totem now, one that crams a small venue at Swn each year with people happy to see them a twelfth time and miss other new bands for; early gigs (first one supporting Lightning Bolt lest we forget) saw them as something of a scrappy power trio, sole surviving member Hywel marshalling two geezers from SKWAD to make a weighty brew of fret-tapping and party math rock dynamics. Even in Incarnation#1 it was a winning recipe – slippery post rock too joyous with melody and invention to be mentioned next to most of that genre’s main shakers. Songs were rejigged and rearranged for each gig, mutating on past steady line up changes (Incarnation#2 with iceman ben on guitar and hairy cellist Ollie is a personal fave) and odd periods of inactivity. Seems almost weird to think of the current line up – with ex-Jarcrew and Leave The Capital dudes bring bass heft, keyboard sheen and religiously observant drumming – in terms of stationary stability, but the twin facts of a settled band and definitive album versions of (sometimes years old) songs makes if fairly unavoidable, no matter how illusory.

Pretty happy to report then that ‘Accelerated Learning’ is pretty great; a debut album that fizzes with confidence and buries weird noises and melodic gems under deceptively shiny surfaces. There’s some brilliant moments: opener ‘staynicegetradical’ pulses with urgent drums and fluoro synth hum, buzzes, breaks down and builds up beforespitting out a solitary vocal line at the death. More breathless fun for ‘Awesome Tapes From Africa’, the tropical fan favourite that isolates the perfect sunkissed, five-note guitar riff, isn;t quite sure what to do with it, but has brief, balmy fun dancing around it anyway. The 2011 version is sugary without being saccharine, and the videogame bleepfest that slowly mutates back into the song’s original riff is a nice touch (and not bad for a track that essentially opens with a drum solo).

Long term fans, especially those stuck mentally dancing to old Clwb sets, may find ‘Accelerated Learning’ a touch too heavy on the vocals. It’s true that on ‘Brace Yourselves For The Secrets Of The Juggernaut’ and ‘… In Garnant And Ammanford’ they sail a little too close to those of current yelpy trend bands in tight trousers; results elsewhere are much better though. ‘Dear Malcolm Sullivan I Hope You’re Alive’ is knotty and melancholy, slow-throbbing with three separate killer hooks, while ‘Psycho Billy’ is a great earworm chorus repeated endlessly amongst handclaps and squawking sax. ‘Person For The Person’ shows the album’s permanent lightness of touch best: the underrated oldie’s collaged robot samples buzz constantly over tiptoe-ing guitar; after a hundred listens its hold on you is total.

‘Accelerated Learning’ is pop music shot through with experimentalism, unafraid of shoving in a burbling, squelchy instrumental that sounds like a bedroom Emeralds (‘Down And Out…’ is brill btw) in the same hour as a quiet little guitar doodle (‘Ballad#2′ is, you know, alright). Closing number ‘The Choir Song’, with piano, strings and heartbreak coda, could have been painfully wet; as it is, it has a minimalist gothic intro, an overheard conversation at the end, and makes a brilliant virtue out of its awkward beauty. ‘Accelerated Learning’ stamps big ownership on the past and present, and makes the future look pretty grand too.

Group Inerane

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The Rusty Trombone of God Presents…

BIRCHALL CHEETHAM DUO

David Birchall / Andrew Cheetham Duo. David on prepared guitar with Andrew on drums. Both met when playing in Rhys Chatham’s G3 Ensemble in March 2011. Free improvisation, drone and noise from Manchester, UK. Full-pelt skronk.

http://soundcloud.com/birchallcheethamduo

DEAS & DENTON

Cam Deas (perhaps better known for his 12-string solo acoustic guitar) teams up with Adam Denton leaving the quiet and beautiful world of his solo project behind for a twin-electric feedback assault. Drawing from influences as far-reaching as La Monte Young, Basic Channel and Pan Sonic. Expect throbbing feedback and hypnotic drones as well as onslaughts of over-arching beats. Deas & Denton have releases on the Blackest Rainbow and Present Time Exercises (PTE) labels.

http://soundcloud.com/camdeas/deas-denton-inferno-side-b
http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=5227
http://www.presenttimeexercises.com/

SOUNDING

Sounding is the new solo project from Ben Moon one half of Forest Creature (Blackest Rainbow). I would expect some modest pulsing lights – perhaps not lasers but they won’t be disco lights either. It’s almost too easy to compare influences to Yellow Swans, Black Dice and Fuck Buttons but I am going to do it anyway.

http://soundcloud.com/sounding-1

R.SEILIOG

R.Seiliog was born in the basement of a watchmakers shop in Peniel, North Wales in 1985. This early exposure to the syncopated rhythms of countless different timepieces was to have a lasting effect on the way he hears the world and indeed, composes. His music has the repetitive, hypnotic, and melodic qualities of his kosmiche forefathers Klaus Schulzes, CAN and Harmonium, but is harmonically more akin to Cluster or Terry Riley.

http://soundcloud.com/r-seiliog
http://www.youtube.com/user/yseiliog

Monday 28th November
The Gower, 29 Gwennyth Street, Cardiff
8pm £3adv / £5 door

Tickets: directly via paypal – https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=EEJRD53TQBQK4

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• Doors: 8:00 PM
• Price: £4 Adv
• Entry: 16+
• Room: Main Room