Shhh, don't tell anyone but Brighton has a rather special new gig venue and it combines the intimacy of the Free Butt with the ambience of, well, a Moroccan boudoir. Tucked between East Street’s Toad at the Picture House and The Prodigal pub, Po Na Na is usually home to hip hop and drum & bass nights, but tonight saw the second live music night here promoted by Melting Vinyl.

And what a splendid and incongruous line-up: Thomas Truax, The Cribs, and Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies. My pint glass runneth over - or at least it would if they served pints here, but alas it’s a bottles-only venue.

What a splendid line-up.
My pint glass runneth
over - or at least it would if
they served pints here.

Undeterred, we grab a beer and a hop and a skip later we’re eyeball to eyeball with gangily handsome New Yorker Thomas Truax, who makes his own instruments. 'The Hornicator' is a gramophone horn wired up to a mouthpiece, 'The Spinster Sister' a drum machine fashioned from what looks like a gerbil wheel, a satellite dish, some pliers and a mini tambour.

Truax leads us through his world with songs like ‘Inside the Internet’ about losing friends to the internet, complete with mini keyfob recorder playing a mournful modem sound. When it’s time for The Spinster Sister to lay down her tempo, Truax reverently lays his finger on her and with perfect comic timing she comes nonchalantly to life. More like a band-member than an inanimate object, she has a slightly unsettling stage presence.

Last time Truax performed in Brighton it was to fifteen people in The Sanctuary. Tonight however he has a full and very appreciative house. A fitting start to the evening’s entertainment, leaving just enough time for a quick nosey around the venue, which reveals huddles of folk clustered in dark alcoves dimly lit by glowing lanterns.

Fresh from the NME Brit Pack Tour, The Cribs bound on confidently. Visually, the three Jarman brothers are like two indie-era Mark Owens on guitars/vocals backed by a young Bernard Butler on drums. There have been many Strokes comparisons and they’re clearly a big influence, but exhuberant, compelling, and having a bloody good time, they’re what live music should be all about.

Lead guitarist Ryan’s leather jacket flies off revealing a nod to the recent Brit Pack Tour in the shape of a dodgy union jack vest, and cheesy plastic glasses come on and off at whim, all the while Ryan letting rip with jumping scissor kicks while Ross clambers up onto his drumkit excitedly. During the last song the irrepressible Ryan spots a solid iron girder above him and decides to climb along it monkey-like over the stage, whilst prodded by Gary’s bass guitar, and lands just by the stage door. What an exit.

exhuberant, compelling, and
having a bloody good
time, they’re what live
music should be all
about.

Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies are something else altogether. The Glass Gypsies take to the stage like refugees from the musical ‘Hair’ heading for the Woodstock Festival, stopping off on the way to back-up pocket-sized glam rock god Bobby Conn.

Leaping onto the stage with all the pomposity he can muster, Cribs producer Conn is awe-inspiring in silver glittery eye make-up, ass-kicking platforms and tight pink spandex trousers. From then on in it’s a wall of progressive glam rock recalling the likes of Ziggy Stardust, Genesis and, cripes, Rush.

Conn’s outraged falsetto is occasionally lost amidst the squealing guitars, which is unfortunate as it’s the lyrics that set him apart from, say, The Darkness and reveal him to be more than just a comic pastiche. Songs from Conn’s lastest album offer a bitter satire on Dubya’s post 9/11 United States, with songs like ‘Home Sweet Home’ parodying the paranoid, insular mood of the moment where garages are stockpiled with food and “with a gun by every door...I am free, I’m free to live my life in constant fear".

‘Relax’ is sung in the first person as a war-mongering George ‘Dubya’ Bush who "didn’t need to get elected, when I was born I was selected". At times Conn seems so possessed it's as if he's directly channelling some crazed aspect of this post-9/11 psyche. Without the humour, though, it’d all be a wee bit too earnest, and Conn counterpoints this by dipping fervently into the glam rock cliche bank. He ends one song, for example, by pointedly drawing a question mark in the air, and when his finger creates the dot it lingers pointing archly at the audience, his face frozen in a po-faced mask of enquiry.

The crowd love Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies, whooping up a joyful hoedown right there on the floor, a thunderous racket of cheering and foot-stamping ensuring they come back on for one last encore of unhinged glam rock before heading off into the night.

The gig started late due to technical difficulties, no huge problem for Po Na Na which boasts a nightclub’s late licence, but I suddenly realise it’s way past my bedtime, my coach and horses now pumpkin and mice. We trundle off home still reeling from the Bobby Conn experience, chuntering excitedly about the bands, the venue, The Spinster Sister...