So you’ve run away from home, hotwired daddy’s Caddy, the cops are on your tail - who you gonna ram in the stereo to soundtrack your roadtrip to the edge of the world? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? C’mon - formulaic schmaltz. The Raveonettes? - too calculating; too clean. The White Stripes? - too parent-friendly and too, too colour-coordinated, goddamnit. You want a filthy rock ‘n’ roll beast with ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed across its greasy fists. You want The Kills. ‘Fried My Little Brains’? - now that puts the pedal to the metal.

Just a scruffy, skinny girl and a scruffy, skinny guy. Burning lungs, howling guitar, remorseless drum machine. Sweaty and convulsing, their bodies wrack together like forbidden, hateful lovers. Thrill! as Hotel shoots VV with his guitar and she ricochets, snarling, across the stage. Coo! as VV dallies in circles like an extra from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Look-away-a-bit-embarrassed! as Hotel proffers his vibrating guitar to VV’s crotch.

Live they're fearless, gritty, feral. But somehow you get the nagging feeling it’s the same show that Oxford saw last night and Leeds will see tomorrow - not a crime, not uncommon, and makes me anticipate second album ‘No Wow’ no less. It’s just hard to explain how they can seem at once so raw and yet slightly unspontaneous - but god, how do you do ‘authentic’ these days?

I dunno, but support Gin Palace do. It’s a more Cramps-like rock ‘n’ roll this time. Singer Megan Wilkie’s realised that blondes have more fun but the truly bad girls are brunette all the way. She banters with, berates and cajoles the crowd; grinning, offers a heckler up on stage for a scrap. While Jon and Stuart thrash away behind, Megan hollers at the crowd, her booming voice at odds with the cute 50s dress she wears so well. ‘It’s Audrey Hepburn gone bad,’ cries the woman next to me. Yeah. It’s only rock 'n' roll - but I like it.