Palma Violets, Brixton Jamm, London

Gigs nowadays can be tricky little blighters. We’re the iPhone generation. Sometimes - particularly when we’re dealing with a Newly Hyped Band - the punters seem more interested in watching the show through the poxy camera on their Instagram app than really paying attention. It’s less about the music sometimes, far more about being able to declare triumphantly to your Facebook friends ‘I was there’.

Tonight is one of those ‘I was there’ nights too, although in a very different sense. There isn’t a single phone being held aloft, and the only chatter that takes place during the show is excitable affirmations passed between friends – wide-eyed music fans seeing something that feels special and real. It’s slightly easier to understand why your Uncle Roy witters on about the time he saw the Sex Pistols play the Free Trade Hall in 1976; and just maybe you’ll be boring your own young relatives to death about the time you saw Palma Violets play the Brixton Jamm one day, too.

As Palma Violets bound around the stage, with all the energy of Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout, it’s impossible not to get drawn into the mayhem. There’s an onstage chemistry between bassist Chili Jesson and singer Sam Fryer that invariably invites the Pete-and-Carl comparison, but it’s also completely riveting. DIY nearly gets clobbered over the head by one young gent as he hurtles towards the stage carrying an alarming velocity before knocking a piece of equipment off the ceiling with a stray limb. The band make no effort to remove the stage invader, and drummer Will Doyle, clad in his hilariously inappropriate Victorian nightdress, is in stitches. T-shirts are being waved the other side of the room, presumably because members of the audience are taking their kit off with reckless abandon. We wouldn’t be surprised. Palma Violets invite this kind of rock n’ roll behaviour, but the best thing is it all seems very spontaneous, and not at all contrived.

The set culminates with Chili leaving his bandmates to a drawn out guitar shred, exiting by way of throwing himself off the stage. Flailing his way across the top of the crowd he then returns, shortly afterwards, to his bass duties. He does not return alone, however. Support band Childhood lead a skirmish, and are quickly followed up by swathes of audience members. The Jamm descends into pandemonium, as security half-heartedly haul a few people off stage before deciding that, given half the room appears to be crammed up there, there’s just too many to forcibly remove. Eventually natural order is restored as Palma Violets flee the stage like a giggling band of naughty schoolchildren, leaving a trail of chaos in their midst.

People who are skeptical about Palma Violets are most probably in the camp that hasn’t seen them live. Say what you like about their admittedly derivative sound, their so-called ‘originality’. Nothing, lets face it, is original any more. When Palma Violets take to the stage they emit exuberance and energy, and also a certain authenticity – and at the end of tonight’s gig, who cares if they sound like the damn Libertines or not.