Venue 229, home to the four-day Fistful of Fandango indoor festival looks, feels and indeed is a student union bar, complete with plastic glasses, cavernous ceiling and sticky soft-wood gym flooring.

Boisterous drunken chanting might on any other night be attributed to the rugby social spotting their female field hockey counterparts, but on the occasion of Club Fandango’s stewardship it was a vibrant and abundant section of the crowd calling ‘Art Brut, Top of the Pops.’

Whether the blunt sermonising that Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos substitutes for singing electrifies or irritates, it is impossible to deny that live he is an engaging showman.

From beginning every song by calling the band to attention with a twirl of his arm and a ‘Ready, Art Brut...’ to skipping with the mic chord, his presence on stage is a spectacle. This, coupled with the remainder of the band’s shared on-stage idiosyncrasies and the ferocious squealing indie-rock backing they provide, works the laughs from the back of the venue and the frenzied dancing from the front.

At their most compelling during songs such as ‘Demon Out!’ with its impassioned plea not to buy Razorlight records, or the 2009 lyrically revised ‘My Little Brother,’ Art Brut are brilliantly brash rock at its malevolent finest. Overall it might be a little one-dimensional - even if Argos tries to rectify this by actually singing on one song - but never before has being stood in a school hall with a man shouting his world view at you been so enjoyable.

David Ellis
Photo: Rachel Lipsitz