CRYSTAL @ Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, 27 Jul

It might be almost 27 degrees on the streets of Edinburgh as we arrive at Sneaky Pete’s, but inside the venue as support band Spyyn step up on to the stage, it’s even hotter. The Edinburgh-based band’s chilled-out indie vibes are perfect for a hot summer’s day and set the evening off nicely, easing the crowd through a mellow performance.

Post-punk outfit WYLDE are next to put on a show. The stage’s smoke machine is at full throttle and the hazy aesthetic is the perfect visual accompaniment to the groups’ dreamy shoegaze sound. Exemplified by glittering, shimmering, chorus-coated guitar tracks and jinxing melodies, the quartet deliver a sonically sound set and almost certainly gain a few fans too.

As the moisture in this teeny venue reaches its usual sweaty peak, the final support act of this jam-packed line-up, The Motion Poets, get ready to rock – and boy, are they good. Drawing on influences from the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Queens of the Stone Age, there’s a dirty, indie-grunge fashion to the band’s sound, with cuts like One Too Many and A Girl Like This showing off their catchier side too. High-tempo, Alex Turner-esque vocals from frontman Jonah Stead growl effortlessly over dynamic, energetic riffage in what is an almost perfect set (minus one small setback involving a hi-hat, which was nicely saved by a property-based anecdote from Stead). Keep your peepers on these guys, they could be going somewhere.

As new bands go, CRYSTAL have really made a name for themselves in the last couple of years, and not without reason. Having supported Paolo Nutini back in 2016, hit up a host of Scottish festivals and released some killer singles, it’s no surprise Sneaky Pete’s has a decent crowd to greet the quartet as they step onstage.

Kicking things off with their ballsy newest single Heaven, which we premiered earlier this year, you get what the band are all about. As soon as frontwoman Anna Shields and bassist Lizzie Reid burst into the hooky, dual-vocal chorus of 'If you were dead then I would drink your wine,' there are a series of heads nodding along. Straight on from there, the four-piece dive into Sugar Sweet, where there’s a raw, Wolf Alice feel to Shields sassy vocals and charismatic stage presence, while the song itself is infectious as the title suggests.

As Blair Crichton takes off his shirt to combat the heat, he openly jokes that the band haven’t actually prepared a certified setlist – yet the crowd seem to find that more comical and DIY than disorganised. Once they do decide what they feel like playing, however, they choose well, with tracks like Take a Drop and the dramatic finale Sex Rich confirming that CRYSTAL are as stellar a live band as you’d want them to be.