Wu Lyf, Eternal Fags - Arches, Glasgow, Tue 1 Feb 2011

It is a scenesterrific double bill at the Arches, albeit one for only a modest crowd of in-the-knowers. First up, one of Glasgow’s emerging finest, Eternal Fags. Boasting just a drummer and a guitarist they’re bound to earn an unimaginative comparison or two to The White Stripes (RIP), but with unfocused riffs piled on fuzzy beats piled upon indiscernible hollering as they play on the floor at crowd level, they’re more like a Caledonian Lightning Bolt. In other words, the sound of indie pop gone bad, of the blues dying drunk in an alley.

Next up, Wu Lyf (World Unite/Lucifer Youth Foundation), Mancunian masters of the cryptic online presence. Google them, you’ll see. The reality is inevitably sobering: they’re just four young English lads playing guitars, but what a noise they make.

Ignore the odd, silly title and bask in the off-beat anthemic glory of ‘Heavy Pop’ and ‘Spitting it Concrete Like the Golden Sun God’; marvel as they cover Earth almost as if it were a muck-about afterthought; smile at the temerity in playing before a black gravestone cross bearing the legend ‘LYF’. Career suicide, no matter how hard they try, won’t be an option.

Arches, Glasgow, Tue 1 Feb