Name-checked in The Observer, yet largely overlooked in their home town, the best looking band in Oxford bound onstage in front of a packed house to an oddly appropriate Beethoven’s ‘Ode To Joy’, a beaming, joyous sprawl of every noise known to rock. They look like The Clash after a lengthy facial, they sound like the rock n’ roll lovechild of Brian Eno and Sly Stone. They’ve picked up a few tricks from their spiritual fathers, but tonight they just want to rock.

Always looking to extend themselves beyond the usual circles that so many other local bands find so dizzying, Sexy Breakfast first came to this reviewer’s attention when they turned up to entertain protestors at an all-night vigil outside Campsfield House in May. Having now finished their A-Levels, the campaign for world domination begins here in earnest. Sounding as lean and fit as their appearance demands, tonight they race along a tightrope that sways between glam, punk, funk and soul. Singer Joe Swarbrick leads from the front, with world-weary Bowie sighs and raucous Iggy snarls peppering his perfectly realised falsetto. Every teenage girl in this room wants to take him home, even if only to put him in a dress and eyeliner next to their old Barbie dolls. Behind him tight rhythms that owe as much to Isaac Hayes’ lavish arrangements as they do to The Stooges are immersed in sharp measures of heavy synths, scratches, samples and white noise. Crucially, their energy and desire never falters; they have us in the palms of their hands and they don’t let go; there’s no smugness, no shoe gazing, just nine odes to young love and teenage kicks. If this isn’t the best gig of their lives, then it really should have been.

No-one can predict what the future holds for Sexy Breakfast, but tonight there are fifty people walking out of the venue who know they’ve just seen something very special indeed. Like Bowie before him, Swarbrick sums it up as the band return to rapturous applause for their encore – “This ain’t rock n’ roll, it’s genocide”.

Aidan Larkin