I think I was a bit haggared when I came in for Little Bear Wails; meaning I wasn’t quite into their drunken seadog shantees this time as I was back in October. LBW are the house band tonight, attracting a barrel load of art students who were happy to wait while the band spent 15 minutes of the set tuning or detuning or dealing with drink spillages. It were all in good humour but I would worry whether a Clwb crowd would be so forgiving. Once the songs finally get going LBW are like a more jaunty, and remarkably more shambolic, version of Fredrick Stanley Star (can you be more shambolic than FSS? Blimey) with more shouting and more booze – like finding some unassuming guys in the pub who happen to be able to play all an entire set of Bob Dylan covers with the spoons. There are some tunes here and my foot was tapping but it needs to be tighter, boys, tighter.

Sadly no amount of tightness could have kept the LBW-philes in for the Jelas. You’d have thought this Yate trio had stood on the stage and announced they were serial rapists judging by the way the crowd evaporated. So… yes they are pretty divisive. Yeah I can see that. The drums are… off beat. Way off beat. Infact the drummer is probably a hologram from a different band entirely. Hmm.

Hmmmmmmmm.

That’s not fair, actually there’s something about this lot. I don’t know what it is. It’s a really likeable mess, like none of the joints fit but maybe the peices of the puzzle should just be stuck down like that. I have no idea what they sound like because they sound just like themselves. Everett True would be proud.

But Joy of Sex…. Come on, this is Joy of Sex! They’re like, dead friendly and easy. It’s basically lo-fi stripped to the bones drum machine Art Brut style awesomeness. It’s like lots of terribly silly riffs with post-punk style angles, angles everywhere floating in the air. And choral shouting. December Month of Plenty initally sounds like a church christmas hymn spat out of a grinding tin can. I know a lot of the songs already from borrowed tracks and the like and like a geek I seem to be the only one dancing….. CWMON, its JOY OF SEX! As far as I’m concerned they already have some solid tunes and are easily a contender for one of the best South Wales bands in, err, South Wales. Next, North Wales, tomorrow, Birmingham Barfly!