...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead / Rival Schools @ The Garage, 17 April

Whilst not visible from inside the Garage, there’s a full moon out tonight which may explain why the crowd opt to pose along the bar rather than heading forward to enjoy Asobi Seksu, leaving an atmosphere that is funereal at best. Yuki Chikudate tries her utmost to breathe life into the show with an enthusiastic performance, but no-one’s willing to listen.

Rival Schools suffer from the same problem, though to a much lesser degree. Instead, it only takes a few songs to get the audience on their side, Travel by Telephone marking the line where the tide turns and some actual enthusiasm can be witnessed. Walter Schreifels’ schtick has always been near-impossible to dislike, his emotive vocals a mere facet of his punk-rock persona, another one being his wryly playful banter. While their impromptu Bon Jovi cover could have been the highlight, the set closes with Used for Glue to bring us back to more stable ground with a glorious bang.

Any scientist worth his salt knows when it’s time to revise a theory, and this is one such case: the crowd have not been caught under our favourite satellite’s lunar sway. No, it seems they were just holding their energy in reserve, because when Conrad Keely walks on stage there’s a borderline-anime explosion of energy on the floor. Which is nice, because ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead aren’t exactly asleep on their feet either, as the opening barrage of Ode to Isis and Strange News from Another Planet makes apparent with all the subtlety of a hand grenade.

It’s this energetic enthusiasm that makes the show, whether it’s in the form of Jason Reece's alternating energetic turns front of stage and on the drum stool, Autry Fulbright’s tightly groove-wound basslines and smooth-as-butter footwork or Keely’s solid mass of sweat, guitar-god poses and boundless riffitude. [David Bowes]