NO AGE

Nouns is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible; besides, it's way more satisfying to just close your eyes and just enjoy it. Ultimately, it's part of No Age's allure that Nouns is so difficult to figure out, that it manages to be so big while coming from a place so small: All you'll know for sure is that you want to listen longer. Maybe forever. 9.2/10 Pitchfork

Have some balls, UK, and stop trying to stick your loins in the wagon’s exhaust pipe. And be sure to steer away from this one – already clear of the horizon, Nouns is truly psyched, soaring sound. 9/10 DrownedinSound

LOVVERS

This is what I want in an opening act, a band bowling from the lane of the unexpected and scattering my senses like pins demolished by a fiery ball of molten metal. I want aggression and attitude, the feeling in my gut that this band could blow the cobwebs from my scepticism with this country’s punk scene, one stuffed with innumerable so-so acts unlikely to ever mean anything; I want to be moved to scream “Yeeeaaaarrrggghhh” come the climax of songs I’m hearing for the first time. I want to feel my heart beat in time to a hammered bass guitar and for my stomach to lurch an inch left and two right whenever vocalist and guitarist collide on stage, spinning apart and flailing wildly into another song full of fuck-yous and told-you-sos. I want to shake my too-long hair ‘til split ends are in my mouth and in my Guinness; I want to grab the nearest guy and French kiss him hard, feeling another mouth dried through dancing vigorously to something wholly unexpected but instantaneously remarkable.

I don’t ask for much, but Lovvers serve up all of the above and more. The Nottinghamshire quartet, comprised of splinters and slivers of bands better known but less immediately impressive, play as if they’re headlining tonight’s show; they play like this is their last show, their first show, their only show; they play like their very lives depend on twisting their audience’s insides into knots and forcing them to buckle and break, each sunken attendee loving every minute of the pain. This is the same bubbling urge to convulse myself into a sweaty heap I felt when Wives unleashed their primal punk onto the front row of a Brixton Windmill crowd sometime last year; it’s a similar sensation to the brilliant euphoria that washed over me when Aaron North refused to leave the Astoria stage when his red-and-black-clad LA gang were playing second fiddle, wrongly, to Rival Schools. I want it over and over and over, and come Lovvers’ final song, their parting shot of bile and brutality, I rush straight to the merchandise to purchase a demo. It’s an almost unprecedented act. Drownedinsound

Human Hair

Human Hair stretch the foundations of rock music to their very limit and plumb the depths of the human psyche to make exhilarating, personal rock music. Jesus Lizard, Wipers and Pavement perhaps serve as launchpads, but these guys have long left 'em behind...

Nephu Huzzband

Sometimes you never want a song to end. Sometimes its brevity is the key to its success. Such is the case with young band Nephu Huzzband's new single Nurse! Nurse! It weighs in at a minuscule 1 minute 27 seconds but feels though it shouldn't be any other way. Steeped in the nervy New Wave of the late '70s – think early Cure or Mission of Burma – with a gunshot snare, a frantic hi-hat, barely-there lyrics and quirky key jumps, this is a fine exercise in minimalism. Q

7.30-11pm

£8.50 adv

www.gigantic.com