Friday 21/01/05 Gang of Four, The Young Knives @ Montague Arms, London

The Montague Arms is a strange pub. The barmaids are hand-knitted pensioners and there are broken boats on the walls. It’s like someone’s built a Harvester onboard the pirate ship from The Goonies. Stranger still, unsigned Oxford trio The Young Knives are conspicuously ignoring the onstage microwave. Despite wearing "Where the **** have you brought us?" expressions, their strident beats and strangled guitars prove they’re not just hanging around waiting for it to go ‘ping!’. They’re clearly enjoying nudging shoulders with a band who still get more rock n' roll inches than Pamela Anderson.

For the reformed and reviled Gang of Four, tonight is a special pre-cursor to their stuffed Shepherds Bush dates. They’ve been astute enough to realise it's far cooler to titillate small trendy audiences (backed by a small trendy trio) than wash up in some casino car-park sans makeup. Frontman Jon King scuttles around on all fours, popping up at the microphone sporadically, a concept that might induce Bono into projectile vomitations.

And with legendary Andy Gill sporting a guitar the colour of unflushed hospital bog bowls, it’s much like a band of ultra-cool Dads showing you the way post-punk used to be. Except it’s 2005, and it’s the way post-post-punk used to is be… sort of… and now Jon’s smashing the microwave with a crowbar, which makes them ultra-ultra-cool post-punk Dads. Christ alive, even One-Eyed Willy would have to admit, this is a strange pub…