Ro first saw Fat Dog, before anyone had heard of them, at the Windmill in Brixton in front of a crowd of about 25 people. Their manic energy blew her head off. Vanessa and Al K first caught Fat Dog at the Rockaway Beach Weekender in Bognor Regis Butlins in January ’24. The tightly choreographed, manic show was the best thing all weekend.

The exhortations don’t seem necessary as the audience is already letting off the steam which has built up in anticipation of a full-bore show. Nonetheless, The Courettes’ Flávia Couri knows higher levels of excitement are there to be tapped, that it’s possible to get the crowd to liberate themselves from any restraint they may have left. Limits are there to be pushed.

Manic Street Preachers’ earnest and literate pretentiousness is both their Achilles Heel and their superpower. Their greatest songs are amped by full investment in whatever awkward path they’ve cussedly marched down. At these times, their ever-vaunted love of fist-pumping classic rock lives up to itself.

Brighton band Squid are not in the business of straightforward. Combining jazz chops with a sensibility that’s at once post-punk, prog and avant-garde, their music is wilfully tricksy. Yet it does groove, upon occasion, it does funk. Tunes do pop in for a visit.

Deep Below’s first track is titled “Hibernation.” “A winter breeze blows through my mind,” intones a colourless, dispirited male voice. The ensuing lyrics are similarly bleak. “Trying to warm myself with the memories you’ve left behind, Deep inside this hole bitterness consumes my soul, One day I might wake up but I know it won’t be today.”

You could be easily forgiven for thinking that the young indie rockers, Inhaler, would stick to the formula that has already served them so well for album number three. The Dublin lads had soared to success with their first two albums, seeing them reach the top of the UK and Ireland album charts with their 2021 debut It Won’t Always Be Like This, followed by number two on the charts with their sophomore album Cuts & Bruises in 2023.

As Stoke-on-Trent’s Formal Sppeedwear immerse themselves in what turns out to be their penultimate song, they become lost in the music. What they are playing takes over. Revolving guitar motifs spray forth like light reflected from a glitter ball. An elastic bass guitar bubbles, the frill-free drumming is hard, precise and about forward motion.

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Buñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive)

This is Tunng’s ninth album, their first in five years, and marks their 20^th anniversary by consciously going full circle to the gentle sound sculpture and folk melody of their earliest work. It is also thrown into fascinating relief by arriving just as the world is reeling from the loss of David Lynch.

Of the big UK indie bands of the 00s wave, Bloc Party were always the most austerely art-rockish. Where Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Franz Ferdinand all to some degree or other had a dose of the vaudevillian and a bit of party “woohoo!”, BP adhered way more to the seriousness, alienation and introspection of their post-punk inspirations.