Live Review: Huntly, Two Steps On The Water, Jessica Says, The Curse

The Curse bring a backyard-band energy and artlessness to their rowdy pop-punk; catchy melodies, reverb-heavy guitar and bass, floor-rattling drums and plenty of gusto. The real star of their set, though, is a toddler - presumably the daughter of one of the band members - wearing a pair of earmuffs against the noise while tearing up the sparsely populated dancefloor.

Jessica Says appears next: one woman accompanying her own pop-soul vocal with some nice arpeggiated keyboard lines. She pushes things into edgy-cabaret territory with the chorus, "I'm a Xanax baby/But I wanna get off," before swapping her keyboard for a cello and a laptop programmed with disco cheese. It's kinda fun, but after a few songs the combination of diva-like vocals with backing tracks starts to feel more like karaoke than live performance.

"I don't believe in God, but he fucks you over sometimes." After snapping a string ten seconds into Two Steps On The Water's first song, singer/guitarist June Jones is entitled to a bit of blasphemy. There's an unscheduled interlude while repairs are made, before the chimeric three-piece pick up where they left off. It's worth the wait. From their own prog-folk tracks to a searing acoustic rendition of Patti Smith's Pissing In A River, Two Steps On The Water are something to behold.

As indeed are tonight's headliners, electronic soul-pop trio Huntly, launching their excellent debut EP Feel Better Or Stop Trying. By the time they take the stage there's a warm, friendly vibe pervading the room. The trio's career may be in its early days, but already Huntly's live shows — combining electronic drums and programmed sounds with live keys and vocals — set a new standard for how electronic music can be performed live. Even Elspeth Scrine's inimitable vocals are treated with effects on the fly, punctuated with stuttering delay or transformed completely on the James Blake-esque We Made It. The epic Singing Surts, with its half-chanted vocal (Charles Teitelbaum takes the lead this time), jittering dance beats and jazzy digressions, is an EP highlight and a phenomenon tonight. By the time Andrew McEwan switches from drum pad to full kit for the full-tilt finale, the love and energy in the room are at an all-time high.

As if to prove love is indeed the order of the day, Scrine gathers some of the roses that have been used to dress the stage and begins handing them out to folk in the front rows. This giving of flowers seems an apt ritual to precede the sex-soaked single Sunday Sheets: a few shirts come off and inhibitions are trampled beneath dancing feet as the song (and set) build to a feverish climax.