The silly season is coming to and end and darker nights means back rooms and basements are coming alive with music once again. Autumn 2025 kicks off with a double bill of encouragingly strange new sounds.

First up is Flip Top Head from Brighton. They’re a 6 piece, crammed onto the small stage with keyboards, violin and guitars plus a deputising bassist drafted in having only rehearsed earlier that day not that you’d know it, such is the confidence with which the songs are attacked.

There’s no obvious focal point – singer Bowie Bartlett (nominative determinism alert) is tucked away behind the PA but has an excellent, soaring voice as a counterpoint to the other singer Bertie who leans into the dreaded ‘Sprechgesang’ spoken word thing but not to the point where we’re looking at another Sleaford Yard Cleaners D.C. – far from it.

The mix of soaraway and spoken is just right and musically things are an enjoyably disorientating mix of jazzy, folky, avant rock but with plenty of musical anchors and hooks to keep you interested. I like ’em.

Headlining tonight are Dog Race. Early days for them but it’s a sell out show and there’s a definite buzz in the air. The band file on – I’m still getting used to the fact that Paul Calf moustaches, mullets and clobber last seen on Limahl from Kajagoogoo in 1983 are in vogue again but preferable to Library-hater Liam Gallagher and his fucking designer anorak gurning at me from billboards. Unlike the support, Dog Race have a very definite focal point in singer Katie Healy. Her voice, rising from deep and guttural, to screamy to an almost operatic warble is quite something. I hear a hint of Billy Mackenzie, Anohni/Anthony, and maybe going way back Lene Lovich. It lifts Dog Race sky high above the standard 2025 Indie competition – and although Healy is not exactly throwing shapes she puts in a completely gripping performance.

Musically things are more conventional – bass driven, synth and guitar. The Cure, Joy Division, Soft Cell, Bauhaus…so far, so 4AD. The vocals take us to some uncanny spaces and the music needs to follow it – and sure enough there is an unnamed new song – written days earlier – where the band hang back and Healy plays solo on keys and we can hear the unconventional intonation and tone she can conjur up before she steps away and things explode. There’s something happening here. Quietly charismatic, unsettling and wonderfully gothic but in a very 2025 way rather than a retro 80s way – and there is some serious frugging and grooving going on in the audience.

Darkness you can dance to.