Barfly, London
There's the gnarly glam number about a mother turning to lesbianism, named after the ancient Greek poet, Sappho. There are the odes to chasing teenage kicks through a Godless universe. There are the hints of family lost to insanity, friends lost to suicide, ancestors lost to war and youth lost to hedonism. It's staggering that some would have a band as bristling with imagination as London's Tribes tagged as mere grunge revivalists, not least because their music is actually a mutation of glam-era Bowie and proto-grunge Pixies, with dashes of melodic punk and Britpop. Which would have us hailing them as the founders of glungepop, if that didn't sound like something you should be arrested for doing to ducks.
The avid devotees of Tribes' debut album, Baby, crammed into the smoke-clogged Barfly, know better – that Tribes might well be the band to disprove rumours of the death of the guitar. Tonight's tiny, competition-winners-only gig proves their already formidable abilities on stage, and where instant superstars such as Florence and the Machine struggled to stretch thin debuts to arena dimensions, Tribes already boast an hour bulging with bangers.
Sappho and Whatever possess indelible melodies. Nightdriving is a rousing torch ballad dedicated to Charlie Haddon from Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, who killed himself in 2010. Girlfriend and Coming of Age grant grace to growing pains. Himalaya is the suitably mountainous epic. And When My Day Comes and We Were Children are anthems of youthful glory that could rally a new indie generation behind one-note solos, killer Killers choruses and chants of "we were children in the mid-90s!". Flailing blindly through young adulthood, the new rock Tribes are massing.