Back when they were good, The Twang were the Brummie lad-rocking heirs to the Happy Mondays’ thrown before becoming a parody of themselves. I took my then girlfriend along to this. She was actually scared of the simmering violence which threatened to erupt. But lads wil be lads.

Date: October 24, 2007

Venue: Rock City

When The Twang first tuned in to everyone’s radar earlier this year, spouting some degree of grandiloquence as to how they’d change music, people listened. And it seems their bombastic lecturing, together with a smattering of nu-baggy ‘choons’, has collected a patronage of intoxicated ‘yoofs’ large enough to sell out Rock City, turning it into a pie-eyed, laddish den of bubbling testosterone.

And it’s exactly lairy anthems like Wide Awake which has caused the musical Richter scale to wobble as though Everest just grew legs and danced like Bez. Full of vim and vitriol, it’s like The Happy Mondays rucking with the Gallagher brothers.

Equally impressive, but ever so ominous, is The Neighbour – a violent and dangerous chant in which Phil Etheridge promises to floor his neighbour for complaining about the noise, while elsewhere Ice Cream Sundae is so Baggy, it will have Kasabian studiously checking their vaults for missing anthems.

Inspired by boozy weekends and mundane jobs, The Twang’s music speaks to a generation of disillusioned, angry youths, just as the Madchester scene did.

But amongst all the machismo, there’s an affectionate heart beating up there. ‘I luv yer”, Phil protests in his broadest Brummie brogue during a rousing Either Way, and the crowd’s reciprocation is palpable.