As we enter only the third month of 2007 it has already been laid out who shall be singing the dawn chorus come December 31st. Like it or not, Birmingham's answer to the first wave of rave-flavoured rock (circa 1989) are going to be this year's biggest draw. Whether or not this is to your liking is quite frankly untenable. Blame your over-excited colleagues at work as they regale in nouveau laddishness once again; your friends at school as they insist you play follow the leader, inducing you into that embarrassing detention; but, more than most, the coldest stare must be directed at a media that can only look back with envious glances at what older brother Kevin recites from his adolescence fifteen years back and look despairingly for something comparatively obvious.

Enter The Twang, a band that - let's be honest - anyone with an iota of respect for the likes of Thom Yorke and Stuart Braithwaite would greet with the same warm welcome as the second coming of the Third Reich. And yet - and here's where I duck to avoid the ensuing bullets like a paratrooper in the desert - they're not that bad.

Proceedings this evening don’t exactly get off to a great start, as ‘the management’ hastily decide to cancel tonight's proposed interview between DiS and their clients due to a few negative comments posted on an internet message board. Ho hum. However, being the (semi) professionals we are, that doesn’t get in the way of objectivity, which when all's said and done, is the main purpose of submitting a review. (Is it? I thought honesty and subjectivity were preferred? – confused Ed)

We even manage to grab a quick word with one of their ‘team’ prior to the band arriving onstage - "It's not a Drowned In Sound thing...", he utters apologetically, "...but we are concerned that the press coverage has been getting a little heavy."

Anyway, onto tonight’s show: to be fair, the band do actually seem a little perplexed by the hype coming their way. Sure, there is that element of laddish bravado, which could be their ladder to the sacred chalice of national acceptance or trapdoor to their downfall, but at the same time, particularly during the insipid Mondays-esque opener 'The Neighbour' - which is littered with more off-key "fucks" than a low-budget porn movie - one gets the impression that the band know they aren't ready for this kind of attention just yet.

Or maybe, just maybe, they never were until the intervention of one Stuart Hartland. Because whatever your take on The Twang - and I think any regular reader of DiS has a pretty clear idea of which way the land lies in these parts by now - it would be hard to imagine any cynic being less than impressed with the performance of their youthful-looking (in comparison to the majority of his colleagues) guitarist this evening.

While the U2 and Simple Minds licks must be evident even to the most lackadaisical viewer of The Breakfast Club, Hartland displays an inventiveness that lifts him way above the lad-rock cauldron his bandmates have dumped him in, even to the point where one feels he’s in the wrong band, for now at least. What's even more startling is that he is given a bollocking at one point by one of the band's dual vocalists for starting a song too early. Or maybe he joined in too late? You decide...

Anyhow, what is shaping up to be the most Shine-compilation derivative gig of the century finds itself elevated into the "actually, maybe this lot could have something going for them after all" category two songs before the end.

New single 'Wide Awake', while floating away on U2's streets with no name like a rubber dinghy without a paddle in Skegness harbour, does possess a radio-friendly, and increasingly addictive - or should that be nagging? - tune that, in the confines of the rest of this evening's set, is hard to shake off.

This - and everything else aired this evening - is usurped in one elongated swoop by the claustrophobic two-songs-in-one dilemma of 'Cloudy Room', undoubtedly the highlight of The Twang's set, and the only song that really does justify some of the hype bestowed on this band. Imagine the close-knit guitar squeals of Storm In Heaven-era Verve coupled with a vocal that is equal parts Mike Skinner before fame got to his head and Lou Reed if 'Walk On The Wild Side' had been penned in the middle of the Bull Ring.

Sadly, one swallow doesn't make a summer. But at least there is a glimmer of hope. Just.

Photo courtesy of Gary Wolstenholme