Just as well then that tonight’s headliners deal almost exclusively in songs that do just that. Fanfarlo take to the stage with barely enough room to wiggle an elbow, the six of them and their myriad instruments filling the Bodega’s small stage with ease. There’s everything from the standard, guitars and drums, to mandolins, trumpets, keyboards, glockenspiels, wood saws and those keyboard things with hosepipes in. Imagine the majesty of Arcade Fire meeting the euphoria of the Polyphonic Spree after the Appleseed Cast and Anathallo set them up at a party, in your front room, which is crowded with friends. That’s what tonight’s gig is like, probably.

Fanfarlo’s 45 minute set is filled with songs from their sumptuous debut album, Reservoir. Old favourite Drowning Men makes an appearance as does album opener I’m A Pilot and current single The Walls Are Coming Down, which has seemingly been on loop at BBC 6Music for the last few weeks. The airplay seems to have done some good. The Bodega is close to capacity and most are singing, dancing and smiling along to the aforementioned single, and for that matter, for the duration of the set.

Things were brought to a close all too soon with Fanfarlo modestly accepting the adoring gratitude of this small upstairs room in central Nottingham. Swedish support act, First Aid Kit (who were equally delightful), soon beckon them back on stage to do an impromptu cover of a Devendra Banhart song. The applause and cheers that meet both acts come the end are rapturous to say the least.

Judging by that reaction, the crowd seemed to enjoy it, this particular onlooker leaving with a big grin on his face, calm restored and an overwhelming feeling that despite the irritating events of the preceding hours, everything is going to be all right. Things are more than all right. They’re positively joyful when bands like Fanfarlo are around.

Picture by Oliver.Peel

As the newly monikered sub-genre up there suggests, frontman Dustin Kensrue used to shout and scream, a lot. He did it quite well to be honest but now he has toned it down a touch.

Like their contemporaries Brand New, the members of Thrice have spent the last four years evolving their band into something far more adventurous and complex. The material on the last offerings, The Alchemy Index and Vheissu, possessed a maturity that melodramatic earlier work had lacked. Despite this it retained the aggression and power of the first three albums, releasing it in a more considered manner. Measured, rather than raw, emotion is now cajoled and enticed from Kensrue’s voice. His recent solo jaunts seem to have made him more aware of his vocal talent and he is now capable of manipulating those cords much more acutely.

Beggars is a record that extends that rebuilding. The opening three tracks display Thrice at their broad-ranging best. Powerful tracks like All The World Is Mad and The Weight stand strong alongside the delicacies of the mournful, post-rockish Circles.

The album follows a similar path for its remainder. Tracks like Talking Through Glass should be played loud and used to test the aerodynamics of aeroplanes in wind tunnels while The Great Exchange and Wood & Fire used to settle insomniacs.

However, there are one or two low points. Doublespeak, through its keys and swaggering drum beat, sounds a bit like Starsailor to begin with and Kensrue does have a touch of the Cornell about his vocals at times.

Minute lapses into middle of the roadary aside, Beggars is an accomplished album that shows Thrice are capable of becoming a dominant force in the world of the headbanging muso and even hints at relative mainstream exposure.

Surely they won’t be Beggars for much longer.

Champions kicks off with the frenetic Economics, a raucous number about bills and overdrafts in which many students and young twenty-somethings will find catharsis through the agonised scream of, “this is one outrageous charge / I haven’t even used my card / BANKERS! YOU HEARTLESS, BASTARDS!”, while taking a pop at those who buy what they can’t afford.

Filled with hammer-ons, pull offs and duel guitar lines the next track, Ringo Starr – 2nd Best Drummer In The Beatles, focuses on the band’s disillusionment with their own generation, “I don’t know what came first / the shit music or the shit drugs / but I do know that all the kids who used to go to shows now go to clubs / I don’t like dance music and I don’t think that I ever will”.

It may seem slightly juvenile or un-weighty in its subject matter (as the band possibly acknowledge in Ringo Starr with the refrain “it could be worse, we could be dead”) but if artists write about what they know and do it well, it’ll sound heartfelt. Champions certainly manages that. The vocal delivery is caustic in its rage, the riffs especially crushing, conveying their anger in classic fashion when necessary.

Blakfish demonstrate an admirable ability to weave in and out of heavy riffs and delicate guitar noodling, most evident in Your Hair’s Straight But Your Boyfriend Ain’t, which starts with one of the most crushing guitar lines heard this side of Sikth’s last album and some of the most dreamlike guitar work since Minus The Bear’s most recent offering.

After an explosive beginning to the record, things are calmed down somewhat, relatively speaking, and the songs become slightly more driven by melody. Moving toward the post-punk side of things a la Dartz (If The Good Lord Had Intended Us To Walk He Wouldn’t Have Invented Roller Skates and We Beg, We Borrow, We Steal) but Blakfish retain their own aggressive flavour throughout the album.

There are hints of great modern punk-derived bands strung through Champions. Echoes of the aforementioned Minus The Bear and Dartz can be found in the gentler reaches while Leicester’s sorely missed Public Relations Exercise, Every Time I Die and The Number 12 Looks Like You seep into the constantly changing and unusual time signatures to be found in tracks like I Saw A Car On Fire There Once and The Closer To The Bone, The Sweeter The Meat. The songs rarely follow any kind of verse/chorus structure; it’s hardcore for the reincarnated prog fan, if that’s not too much of a contradiction.

The range of subjects covered in the lyrics is enough that Champions maintains freshness and interest with each listen. Everything from banking charges, vegetarianism, the trials and tribulations of parking, the troubles of relationships, aspirations and ambitions to wasting days watching TV are mentioned, telling tales of being a young and broke adult in modern Britain. Its not necessarily lofty and profound but it speaks to all, whether they fancy themselves as a hoity-toity highbrower or a Hollyoaks soup-brainer, and is that not the ultimate skill of song-writing: creating something that vast swathes of the record buying public can relate to while making it still sound personal to each listener and the band?

Champions indeed.

The fluctuating speeds of delivery are addictively disorientating, gloriously confuddling the listener into submission.

All the tracks are incredibly short with only three songs – Everything Fades, June On TV and album closer The Bluebird Song – that clock in at over two minutes in length, but almost all of these clipped numbers seem to float and bleed in and out of each other in the most flush of fashions. This serves the listener with sharp bursts of jazzy pop spiking in the ears and travelling in from all directions interspersed with gentler waves relaxation that allow the twenty-odd minutes to melt into as little or as long a time as your mood decides to take.

Tom Wilson, the brains behind it all, creates a world brimming with delightfully flawed characters through whom he tells his stories. It’s easy to imagine these songs, particularly Birth Of A Legend and Among The Rushes, soundtracking some classic freeze-frame children’s animation (as the album title may suggest) akin to Bagpuss or the Magic Roundabout: Something altogether strange, yet beautiful, warm and friendly.

Each time it plays there is something new and unexpected to be heard, be it the bizarre guitar solo in Pass Me By or the sudden start of Would Like To Meet, the schizophrenic piano of the prophetic Everything Fades or the ethereal qualities of Hey Mr.

Freeze Puppy’s Animation isn’t something likely to be heard on Radio 1 any time soon and that’s just as well as it will very possibly liquidise the minds of those that like music to be linear, clear and simple, resulting in brains dribbling out of mouths nationwide. However, for those that like a bit of oddness and unpredictability in life, Animation’s mix of sounds won’t be far off the mark.