It’s the smaller, lower-key nights that hold the most appeal in Cardiff this month, as – with the exception of the long-since sold-out JONATHAN RICHMAN shindig in Clwb (28th) the medium-scale and up shows favour duller, worthier fare. The always-excellent ERRORS return once more, their splendidly crunchy, danceable post-rock/electro ever a treat. Top bill for their Clwb show (13th) where top-drawer Rock Action labelmate REMEMBER REMEMBER and Three Trapped Tigers man TOM ROGERSON support. Errors move on to the Fleece (14th) but y’know, Clwb will be way better. GENTLE FRIENDLY will hopefully make it this time, having pulled their Swn show; the dayglo No Age/Japanther thump is scrappy, life-afffirming fun (Undertone, 5th), as are awesome brother-sister noise outfit THE HYSTERICAL INJURY (10 Feet Tall, 16th). Denver-based pair GAUNTLET HAIR mine a similar seam to Gentle Friendly, albeit a less euphoric, grubbier one, and should be checked out at Buffalo (18th). Speaking of euphoric, there’s primary-coloured cheeky house fun from Raf Daddy out of THE 2 BEARS at Clwb (16th), where entry is free if you bring a radiator or something; get there early for the witchy Knife-style electronica of FACE + HEEL.

The laudable recent trend for booking return visits for friends of Swn weekends past and present continues, with THOMAS TRUAX (10 Feet Tall, 8th) and his mechanical menagerie back for his 768th Cardiff date, the battering ram two-man hardcore fun of RUN, WALK returning at Buffalo (3rd, or Louisiana, 2nd), promising Barely Regal signees HOLLAND (Undertone, 24th) and folkies both indie-fied (ROSIE TAYLOR PROJECT, 10 Feet Tall, 19th) and Jefferson Airplane fuzzy (HAIGHT-ASHBURY, Gwdihw, 23rd). Indiepop good and less good is back amongst us too, care of the winningly punchy ALLO DARLIN’ (Buffalo, 29th and Fleece, 28th) and the tiresome Shrag (Undertone, 25th) who are at least supported by clattering noise-pop kids TUNABUNNY.

Bristol, meanwhile, gets the plaudits for breadth of genre, gig size and eye-catching names this month. There’s an implausibly great-looking rash of shows at the o2 Academy, whose cavernous non-charms welcome LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY (4th), as focused and on-point as you could reasonably expect at last May’s ATP and with an excellent band to boot; JUSTICE (9th), whose terribly overcooked second album will be bolstered live by their classic material and a shit-hot live show; the fantastically goofy ur-stadium rock of MASTODON (5th), fast becoming the Metallica it’s ok to not push off a cliff; and GZA (18th), possibly the third best living Wu-Tang member and most likely ambling through the best bits of ‘Liquid Swords’ on a bill with brit-hop lifers SKITZ & RODNEY P. The Academy (20th) and Cardiff Uni (19th) also host the NME Awards Tour, which is worth a punt for METRONOMY’s arch electropop gems and, in particular, the deliciously filthy electro-boosted hip-hop of AZEALIA BANKS. Both will make the rank indie rock losers on the bill look like eternal dullards.

Elsewhere, Bristol has some tidy-looking gems, not least at the Cube. There, MARY HAMPTON’s disquieting subject matter and crystalline vocals make for superbly warped alt-folk which will be a highlight of the month’s listings (11th). The same venue also hosts an ace triple-bill of experimental duos (17th) headlined by Brooklyn’s HIGH PLACES, whose bleached-out psychedelic pop is ably supported by THE HYSTERICAL INJURY and Zun Zun Egui / SJ Esau side-project HESOMAGARI. I know, right? Hyper-literate pop polymath MOMUS is at the Cube too (10th), while around the grounds Bristol rounds up varied treats care of beloved agit-folk-punk duo VIALKA (Café Kino, 17th), the mighty post-hardcore screamalong fun of Leeds nutbars PULLED APART BY HORSES (Fleece, 18th), ex-Cul de Sac man and 12-string picker par excellence GLENN JONES (Arnolfini, 23rd, with SHARRON KRAUS), RM HUBBERT, formerly of unsung Glaswegian post-rock outfit El Hombre Trajeado (seriously, look them up) and now solo (Cube, 2nd with Cardiff’s THINGS MAKE ELECTRIC), STILL CORNERS’ poised detachment and brittle Broadcast melodies (Louisiana, 9th), glorious Fence Records drone-folk from KING CREOSOTE & JON HOPKINS and the fine WITHERED HAND (Fleece, 5th) and the perennially underrated and beautifully crafted pop of FIELD MUSIC (Fleece, 23rd)..

Qu Junktions are back, bringing intriguing and playful experiments in techno from ITAL (formerly of solid Dischord kids Black Eyes, still half of no-wave freaksters Mi Ami) to Bristol’s Take 5 Café (10th). Diogenes have a couple of excellent shows, with exploratory psych lifers ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS (Croft, 9th) and slow-crawling doom from PUS and others (Croft, 2nd). Blinding scenes at the Cube (25th); “experimental tuba trio” ORE offer a wall of numbing low-end and, well, shitloads of whacked-out brass. Come on, that sounds amazing. ANTA, FAIRHORNS and SKJOLBROT make up a corking bill. This month’s obligatory SATURDAY’S KIDS mention: they’re at the Croft on the 16th before a launch gig for the new ‘Grey On White’ 7″ which takes place in the basement of Newport’s Barnabas Arts Centre (23rd).

What have I missed? Not a lot, although I heard DJANGO DJANGO’s assured late-period Beta Band single on the radio this morning and it was pretty good (Cooler, 25th). THE DEATH OF HER MONEY appear with AXIS OF at Buffalo (26th), always good. THE AFTERNOONS, presumably cryogenically frozen since 2001, are back and playing Buffalo (25th); sweet South Walian Sarah Records pop, as I recall. LONEY, DEAR does sad-eyed Swedish melancholia (Louisiana, 19th) and CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, who must be gutted to be in the round-up, tour their sadly flat recent material at the Thekla (4th). Nice surf one-two at the Cube (4th) with MUSTARD ALLEGRO and HANGMEN, who I should get around to seeing. Gathered In Song have OX playing Le Pub (8th) and FANFARLO do brass-assisted junior Arcade Fire-isms (Thekla, 27th). Think that’s about it. Time for my cocoa.

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.

Buffalo, Undertone and 10 Feet Tall lead the way in the January sales, as usual, giving curatorial duties to bands, labels and promoters wanting to put on a cheap night. New kids on the block, the Moon Club (space above the Full Moon, formerly Y Fuwch Goch/Kaz Bar etc) go one better with a full month of completely free shows. Highlights, you say? Well, the Joy Collective Hot Boyz DJ Team fully endorse MARIA & THE MIRRORS’ rescheduled Buffalo show (4th), with an excellent support bill of GINDRINKER, TOTEM TERRORS (formerly Joy of Sex) and WRONGS (formerly James James, now about 3% more easily searched online). Y NIWL and H. HAWKLINE are the party-starting dream team the kids all crave, and they team up with Harvest (Buffalo, 28th) while Y Niwl also play Bristol’s Café Kino on the 7th. Lesson No. 1 bring the return of Liverpudlian sludge monsters CONAN (Buffalo, 22nd, with co-hosts PUS), while long-missing hardcore types THE KEEP return alongside supergroup of sorts (members of Night & The City Of Broken Promises, Ironclad etc) NATURAL ORDER (Clwb, 20th). It would be remiss of us not to insist you keep your diary free on the 31st, too; FLOWER OF PHONG, a new CD-R record label brought to you by some local miscreants including our own Vivers, hold a launch gig at Undertone. Details here shortly. Meanwhile, Moon Club freebies, still very much subject to additions, include STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER STAR (28th, with HIS NAKED TORSO), THE DEATH OF HER MONEY (13th), BEDFORD FALLS (26th, with Swansea surf dudes HANGMEN), A THOUSAND ARROWS (22nd) and WITCHES DRUM and THORUN (27th).

As you might expect, there aren’t a great deal of tours calling this way so early in the new year, although a few bigger names do pop up. The city’s club nights score big, with JOY ORBISON and JACKMASTER returning for another B2B set following last year’s blinder (Clwb, 27th) and Signature bagging totally ace Dutch dubstep/techno chap Dave Huismans, aka 2562 (Buffalo, 12th). Don’t miss that one. Swn hit the ground running with three shows varied in nature, if (personally) not so thrilling; dig if you will this year’s “new Strokes” HOWLER (Clwb, 27th with KUTOSIS or Louisiana, 23rd, without), EVERYTHING EVERYTHING (Globe, 17th) and 1996’s favourite misanthrope BABYBIRD (Globe, 26th). Hmm. Better, Barely Regal team their promising recent signings OLYMPIANS with the excellent SAMOANS and perma-touring grunge kids TUBELORD (Undertone, 8th), while JOANNA GRUESOME head up a neat-looking bill at Gwdihw (25th) with LITTLE ARROW and RATATOSK. Nice. Finally, there’s highly promising moody electro atmospherics from FACE + HEEL, whose third attempt at a debut gig will hopefully happen at Buffalo (24th), hook-filled Welsh pop classicism from JEN JENIRO (Clwb, 21st) and a US folky double bill of THE TOY HEARTS and REBECCA PRONSKY care of Gathered In Song (10 Feet Tall, 22nd).

Fewer things jumping out of the Bristol listings for the month ahead, and it’s particularly galling that three blinders occur on the same ruddy night. Top recommendation anywhere this month is WILD FLAG, whose debut album of playful, aware and hopelessly cool indie-rock was one of 2011’s best. Their first full UK tour calls at the Thekla (27th), while across town FRANCOIS & THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS launch their first album since springing from Bristolian cult status to fully-fledged indiepop contenders at the Motorcycle Showroom in Stokes Croft (27th again, with THE LIFTMEN). Meanwhile, same night, there’s a corker of a free gig at the Cube featuring total babes THE JELAS alongside MATT LOVERIDGE and LINE. It’s just not fair, Bristol. Elsewhere in Bristol, VIC GODARD & SUBWAY SECT return early doors (Thunderbolt, 7th), the increasingly proggy, increasingly feted and increasingly dull M83 play the pretty sizey Trinity (17th), THE HORRORS do the same venue (20th, sold out – they’ll play Cardiff in May) and smiling hardcore raconteur HENRY ROLLINS’ latest spoken word show The Long March visits St Georges Hall (17th). Also worth seeing are SCHNAUSER (Grain Barge, 13th), ANTA (Croft, 14th), the CAVES/BEDFORD FALLS bill at the Croft (29th) and the tireless and always fun MR SCRUFF (o2 Academy, 28th). Those are the headlines, god I wish they weren’t.

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.

Is it really five years since Sammo Hung packed it in? Christ, maybe it’s more. Frightening how quickly time goes by. Heck have come and gone, too; they set the bar unsustainably high by supporting the Fall within minutes of forming, or something, and their sporadic and excellent gigs are all that’s left of them. ‘Emits Rays’, Jemma Roper’s debut solo release, is thus the first record of her inimitable talents in half a decade. Fortunately, it’s well worth the wait.

I say inimitable, and in many ways it’s directly recognisable as her. There’s few more imposing voices to be found, and here it coils around the songs much as it did in her old bands. Strident and broodingly romantic against the martial drumming and swooping bass of ‘We Crawled To The City’, luminous and yearning on the gorgeous, pulsing PJ Harvey-does-the-Knife rush of ‘Russian Owls’, it’s essential to the album’s appeal.

On some occasions the continuation is pronounced. ‘Our Powers Are Matched’ survives from the Heck days, but it was never this fun; here it’s reborn as fantastic retro-futurist glam, a stride through John Carpenter’s neon New York streets with a giddy rush of chattering beats and galloping rhythms. If Austra weren’t such portentious goths they might enjoy themselves like this. Elsewhere, Emits Rays feels like a sleek, confident take on common musical threads of recent times, be it the throng of Kate Bush acolytes or the gothic synthwave of Zola Jesus. Yet whereas much of this delivers mood over melody or meaning, shrillness over subtlety, Roper’s poised vignettes get the balance between obliqueness and accessibility spot on, with a sense of pop fun, adventure and thrilling possibility.

Producer Luke Taylor (Love Parry III / Face + Heel) is a perfect foil for the album; it sounds fantastic, crisp and dynamic. The fuzz guitar winding through ‘The Great Depression’, guiding the vocal as it rails and struggles against the whip-crack rhythm, the gloriously liquid new wave guitar line on ‘Our Powers Are Matched’ and the rumbling bass underpinning ‘Russian Owls’ and ‘The Rolling Pin’ are examples of the broad, modernist palette used to flesh out the skeletal, exploratory songs sketched out at Jemma’s solo gigs. The closing ‘Thanks’ most closely resembles these more intimate versions, with stark, plangent guitar and echoey, minimal percussion. It’s an intimate and spooky closer to an album that promises great things. The studio allows her to manipulate the ‘J.R.’ templates into something rich, haunting and supremely effective.

Emits Rays is available from http://jemmaroper.bandcamp.com/.

Some choice one-offs in the capital too, chiefly of an unpleasantly noisy fashion; yer punk and hardcore kids are the ones to turn to for pre-Christmas party fun, no mistake. SATURDAY’S KIDS stop touring for no man, of course, and their co-headline tour with ace W. Yorks / S.Wales punkers FACEL VEGA calls at Undertone (15th), with HARBOUR and HUNGER ARTIST in support. The latter band also prop up GOODTIME BOYS’ co-headline with Berlin’s AT DAGGERS DRAWN (Undertone, 1st) on a fine bill with THE DEATH OF HER MONEY and CROSSBREAKER. Woof. Be sure to catch TWO WOUNDED BIRDS’ glowering blend of Wall Of Sound pop, Ramones’ gawky attitude and Gene Vincent tremolo-heavy guitar twang, a highlight of Swn for me and supported by Swansea surf dudes HANGMEN (10 Feet Tall, 8th). Stirring Hereford post-rockers TALONS’ classical violin-driven sound does familiar things very well indeed; they play Undertone’s Christmas party on the 21st. In fact, it’s SOUTH WEST REPRESENT! month, notably the traditional musical backwater of Cornwall. Derivative but fun, not least in appropriating their name, Falmouth lo-fi noiseniks BLACK TAMBOURINES team up with JOANNA GRUESOME (Buffalo, 12th) for some shabby pop fun, while rowdy hardcore types KASA (Undertone, 20th) hail all the way from rock city Penzance. Finally, if you really can’t stand your co-workers and in-laws, spend the Friday before Christmas in the company of SPIDER KITTEN, THORUN and others (Bogiez, 23rd). Across the bridge the excellent people at Burial Chamber present a mammoth line-up including ALTAR OF PLAGUES, Thorun and the very fine BEAR-MAN (Croft, 3rd) and your pals and mine ISLET may or may not be playing the Croft (9th – the venue says yes, deafening silence elsewhere.  Check press, etc).

There’s a handful of fine evenings of more relaxed seasonal cheer scattered about. ALASDAIR ROBERTS hosts “an evening of folk culture, ritual and song” entitled Here’s A Health To The Barley Mow (Cube, 11th), where he’ll perform alongside FINGLEBONE and show a series of BFI films on the arcane and ritual. The man is a total chap. Espers frontwoman MEG BAIRD appears at the same venue (Cube, 8th) on a fantastic-looking psych-folk triple bill with FURSAXA and SHARRON KRAUS, as does recent Swn guest and experimental folkie DAUGHTER (Cube, 6th). Wonky, prolific and weirdly brilliant troubadour MEN DIAMLER, once magnificently described by our own Vivers as “Brian Blessed singing murder ballads”, signs off before calling time on his musical efforts (Cube, 1st), and no less eccentric ex-Hold Steady man FRANZ NICOLAY serenades the Croft (15th). Back in Cardiff ANTHONY REYNOLDS, still best remembered by me and some other old losers as songwriter with splendidly seedy 90s band Jack but now a regular collaborator on his home town’s art scene, performs new material at Chapter (10th); promising new Fence Records signing SEAMUS FOGARTY debuts at the Full Moon (formerly Y Fuwch Goch, 11th) and 10 Feet Tall pay tribute to the late Bert Jansch with songs from THE GENTLE GOOD, RHODRI VINEY and IVAN MOULT alongside DJs and films (11th).

Going to sign off with a few more recommended titbits. Electronic picks of the month are three; LONE, whose ‘Emerald Fantasy Tracks’ melded woozy Boards Of Canada synths and beatific R&S techno to splendid effect (Thekla, 9th), fierce futurist 303 belters from his labelmate BLAWAN (Buffalo, 1st) and a typically fascinating-looking line-up of out-there experimental pop, drone and electronica at the Arnolfini (8th) under the title Active Crossover. EKOPLEKZ, SJ ESAU and SKJOLBROT foremost on that bill. DEATH IN VEGAS’ halcyon days may be behind them but they still crank out some decent krautrock-heavy jams; move fast for their Thekla gig (13th) as it’s possibly already sold out. ACTION BEAT, who are bloody fantastic live and welcome back here anytime, join SJ ESAU (again), ANTA and BIG JOAN in support of MADNOMAD for a tenth anniversary celebration of Bristol’s Club Choke (Croft, 22nd). Finally, indestructible Mackem punk legends LEATHERFACE show the young’uns a trick at the Croft (7th). Somewhere, Steve Lamacq is sipping weak cider and sighing wistfully. Merry Christmas, Steve. Merry Christmas everyone.

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.

OK, so hands up all those who thought this fine thing would ever see the light of day? Pah, ye of little faith. Five years or so down the line from their tantalisingly brief early sets, and two years since it was recorded, Power Grab arrives. That it does so as a budget-priced download-only release, rather than the deluxe double-vinyl, gatefold sleeve with Rhodri and Bernie in Kiss make-up edition it deserves, is a brazen indictment of the times we find ourselves in. Small beer, ultimately, though, as it manages to do the near-impossible; neatly capturing the precision-tooled playfulness of the most memorable RHLH gigs (Swn 2008, Clwb with Islet in 2009, Green Man 2009, Norwegian Church with Rangda in 2010… choose your own), cherry-picking their best moments to date and leaving you unreasonably eager for a swift follow-up.

The template for the album’s carefully-positioned peaks is a carefully constructed bed of simple yet crushingly effective riffs, bass and rhythm parts overlaid with insidious lead guitar and powerhouse drumming. The joy of those sporadic, brilliant live shows, captured so well here, is in the thrill found in subtle variation and the playful creativity with which they tease and stretch the core ideas into supple new shapes. You know them, even if you don’t think you know them. ‘The Capgras Delusion’ is a monolithic, magnificent opening shot, its enormous, serpentine riff and its jerky, Battles-y sibling writhing in and out of a squalling morass of guitar noise. Shuddering, propulsive kick-drums marshal it to a conclusion that’s both a thrill and a disappointment; like the inimitable ‘Stanislav Petrov’ and its triumphant, lumbering core riff, it could go on for twenty minutes and never outstay its welcome.

The trick is repeated on ‘Coincident XY’, another crushingly simple riff that builds and expands in all directions for a full four minutes. ‘Bugatti’, meanwhile, is its gloriously gonzoid peak; if a song could ride horseback through a burning village, this would be it. Relentless, irresistably catchy, with a gorgeously plangent, proggy middle eight, the album’s first true vocal is so perfectly timed it’s unreal. Muscular, lofty and thrillingly effective, this is RHLH in excelsis – visualise them swapping instruments, piling loop upon loop with dextrous glee, and you’re grinning uncontrollably.

What you do get from their Breaking The Magician’s Code-style deconstruction of the songs live, though, is an understanding of the breadth of inspirations and styles they call on. Always eschewing the by-numbers orthodoxy of a lot of post-rock, the mathy pounding of Trans Am or Maserati looms large but there’s far more besides. ‘Nub City’ is muscular and punchy, recalling Shellac’s mastery of dynamics and space. Multiple loops fold in and out, nut-tight and aggressive, before they’re blasted to the four winds as the band ‘play’ the muted riffs on circuit-bent home technology. ‘The Teignmouth Electron’ is all parched, bluesy riffing and insistent pummelling, evoking Kyuss or even Led Zeppelin. Hoary rock classicism in less capable hands, here the dextrous touch and muffled, foreboding vocals are a joy. It’s that magpie creativity that effortlessly lifts them above their peers; the manipulation and distortion they subject the loops to, the instrument-swapping, the confluence of styles with Ratatosk’s anguished vocals and slow-build orchestral scree and Vito’s delicate, expansive post-rock. Some of Power Grab‘s finest moments are in these departures, be it the snaking guitar solo and swirling noise of ‘Ferdinandea’ or the closing ‘Darvaz’, subtle, stately and evocative like ’90s lost greats Billy Mahonie or Rothko. There’s a second album on the way early next year, they reckon; grab this, and everything else they do, with both hands.  Hopfully, with the next one, you’ll actually be able to do that.

Massive thanks to Right Hand Left Hand for providing us with a track-by-track guide to the album.  Part studio diary, part history lesson, always entertaining.  They’re not all about cycling, you know…

1. The Capgras Delusion

This is a name for a mental disorder, in which the afflicted is convinced that a friend or loved one as been replaced by an identical imposter. Closely related to the Cotard delusion, in which the patient believes they’re already dead. This song is quite chaotic to play – the drummer’s riff alongside his mental drumming, the guitarist building up other riffs one note at a time, soloing, muting and finally screaming into the pickups.

2. The Teignmouth Electron

The name of Donald Crowhurst’s boat – he, along with 8 others, took part in the first non-stop round-the-world boat race in the 60s – only one finished. The race has informed a number of songs for RHLH and Ratatosk, and the story is expertly told in the documentary film Deep Water. A bit more of a rock swagger to this song, the guitarist attempts a Josh Homme impression on guitar and vocals, while the drummer manipulates time itself. The lyrics are taken from and inspired by Crowhurst’s journals, written after he’d lost his mind.

3. Stanislav Petrov

Stanislav Petrov – a man who refused to panic when his Russian computer systems showed that nuclear warheads were on their way to the USSR. He recognised it as a computer glitch, and so the soviet missiles remained unlaunched, instead of heading westward. This is the first RHLH song – it’s almost our theme song. One riff and a whole world of possibilities.

4. Jerry Fuchs

RIP Jerry Fuchs, drummer of Maserati (among others) – one of the only instrumental bands I have any time for these days. We were both big fans, and Inventions of the New Season is one of the great instrumental rock records.

5. Bugatti

We love Maserati so much we ripped them off and called it Bugatti. An unyielding, swaggering, pillaging beast of a riff, that gets more unpleasant as the song goes on. The drumming is so good here, the guitarist doesn’t have to do that much.

6. Ferdinandea

A slower, more contemplative song, which is basically one long solo. Ferdinandea is an occasional island in the Mediterranean. A volcano erupts – Ferdinandea forms – Ferdinandea quickly erodes to leave a submerged volcano again. After erupting in 1831, it was the subject of a conflict between the British, French and Italians before it disappeared a few months later without a resolution being reached. In 1986, American bombers mistook it for a Libyan submarine and bombed it.

7. Coincident XY

Is a way microphones are set up. Our second ever song – we spent so long in rehearsals playing this and Stanislav, we realised out first gig was coming up and we didn’t have any other songs. It even has some lyrics, decrying hipster twatheads who maintain that Tweez is better than Spiderland, when that’s clearly fucking nonsense. People who maintain that On Avery Island is better than In the Aeroplane Over the Sea have a stronger argument, but are still wrong.

8. Nub City

Along with ‘Capgras’, it was among our first songs written with multiple loops that built up through the song. The muting section at the end was made possible thanks to a chap called Bien, who made the pedals for us out of used records.

The town of Vernon, Florida (subject of a film by Errol Morris) was notorious for having a huge national percentage of insurance claims on lost limbs, many of them believed to be deliberate – as a result, it became known as nub city. We became obsessed by this story. If I may, an article sums it up better than I can:

L.W. Burdeshaw, an insurance agent in Chipley, told the St. Petersburg Times in 1982 that his list of policyholders included the following: a man who sawed off his left hand at work, a man who shot off his foot while protecting chickens, a man who lost his hand while trying to shoot a hawk, a man who somehow lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor, and a man who bought a policy and then, less than 12 hours later, shot off his foot while aiming at a squirrel.

“There was another man who took out insurance with 28 or 38 companies,” said Murray Armstrong, an insurance official for Liberty National. “He was a farmer and ordinarily drove around the farm in his stick shift pickup. This day – the day of the accident – he drove his wife’s automatic transmission car and he lost his left foot. If he’d been driving his pickup, he’d have had to use that foot for the clutch. He also had a tourniquet in his pocket. We asked why he had it and he said, ‘Snakes. In case of snake bite.’ He’d taken out so much insurance he was paying premiums that cost more than his income. He wasn’t poor, either. Middle class. He collected more than $1-million from all the companies. It was hard to make a jury believe a man would shoot off his foot.”

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09/02/Life/Dismembered_again.shtml

9. Darvaz

Woah, the drummer is on guitar, and the guitarist is on drums! Our first experiment with proper instrument swapping (the drummer has always been nifty enough on the guitar to coin and perform several RHLH riffs, this is the first time the guitarist took his place) produced this tune. To me, it sounds like late 90s post rock, which is when the genre still meant something and was genuinely original. So yeah, we like it.

Darvaz is a region of Turkmenistan that experienced a mining accident in 1971. A drilling rig collapsed into a cavern, leaving a large. To avoid the discharge of poisonous gas they set fire to it, hoping it would burn up in a few days. 40 years later it’s still burning, and it’s known as “the door to hell” – which is where we leave you.