Sometimes a little bit of jolty folk is just the ticket. An hour before they’re due onstage at the Bullingdon just down the road, Kent five-piece Keston Cobblers Club take to the stage in Oxford’s finest record treasure trove, Truck Store. Or, rather, they tuck themselves into the corner without mics and stomp and laugh their way through a short, sweet and very cosy set of acoustic numbers.

Laden with a limited drum kit (read: a sole snare), acoustic guitar and ukulele, the band could have been any ramshackle group of musicians pushed into this civilised setting of sofas and coffees amongst stacks of vinyl. But their somewhat alternative instrumentation adds an unforeseen flair: bass lines are taken up not by a typical string bass, but by tuba-playing Bethan Ecclestone, adding a depth and surprising bounciness to their buoyant, swelling folk-pop.

Covering Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ is a modern nod towards the folk tradition of sharing and re-playing songs. Sibling singers Matt and Julia Lowe’s harmonies burst through one another’s melody lines on this track, and castanets begin to get a-thumping.

Latest single ‘Win Again’ closes the set. Its lush syncopated vocal lines lead up to the dramatic, if slightly obvious, compound of ‘oohs’ as the harmonies now become four-part and really take centre stage. The close proximity yet stark deftness of these vocals is not to be messed with.

Brightly coloured children’s bells set next to a pineapple-shaped maraca highlight the crux of this band’s charm:  yes, their folk-pop is easily-listenable, with catchy riffs and gorgeous swooping melodies. But they’re a folk band – they play music for fun. And through this pounding percussion and these raucous tunes, Keston Cobblers Club take the Oxford crowd far away from the corner of a record shop on a rainy November evening, and back to the Kentish tavern and the local fiddler-come-cobbler from whom the band get their truly folksy name. 

If, like me, you hail from Watford and you discover the town has produced something beautiful, YOU.GRAB.HOLD.OF.IT. I’ve been raving about The Staves for months, less so about Vinnie Jones, Geri Halliwell and Elton. But now I can proudly add Declan Zapala to my list of home-town gems, especially since I later discover he attended my school. Zapala entertained a small crowd in the recently opened Attico Art Gallery, promoting his new album Awakenings and his performance was as visual as it was auditory. His guitar was caressed either brazenly like a sitar or tenderly like a new-born baby, depending on which angle afforded the best sound. In fact Zapala transforms the instrument beyond a guitar: his dexterity produces an entire percussion base and even a double bass such as in the song ‘Broken Rhapsody’ by loosening the strings mid-song. On the percussive guitar spectrum, with Rodrgo y Gabriela and Ben Howard at either stylistic extreme, I would place Zapala midway. He’s a solo artist, but not a singer/songwriter, and whilst his rhythm is more energetic and less mellow than Howard, the frenetic, carnival-esque fury of the Mexican duo is simply alien to the charming, lilting tributes of Zapala to his family. In fact his mother was in the audience, and the song ‘Philomena’ is dedicated to her. Glancing at her during this enchanting song, I could tell something special and personal was being communicated.

After uploading ‘Crystal’ to YouTube, Zapala was launched, and for good reason. Performed live with fierce energy, the guitar itself was in motion, every string blurred with vibration whilst the lower guitar body was intricately drummed. The beginning is like something gothic from the A Series of Unfortunate Events soundtrack, but then four minutes in, it gets super dynamic. Zapala said that The Selfish Gene inspired Crystals with questions like ‘What is life?’ and the miracle of atomic particles interpreted through percussive guitar. Throughout the evening, Zapala would warmly discuss his music, also taking the opportunity to remind us that we were on Watford High Street. Well, geographically yes, but musically we couldn’t be further. Whisked away to his locations of inspiration, we enjoyed the music of Turkish goat herders, Irish folk ballads and Spanish serenades. Zapala’s influences are both unusual and popular; Carlo Domeniconi, Eric Roche and Led Zeppelin to name a few, but the Classical element is also important. The album includes guitar renditions of Bach’s cello suite and prelude.

Innuendoes featuring lube and floppy microphones aside, I could have been attending a prosecco-fuelled mindfulness class. Nothing short of mesmerising, Zapala’s is the kind of music which releases your thoughts, particularly in ‘Sleeping Gently’ – a song written for his nephew – with the pitter-patter plucking evoking raindrops. I wonder several things: how his hands aren’t bruised…how I could possibly be in Watford…how I could write up such a unique performance… There is an incredible intelligence, strength and concentration to Zapala. Definitely worth a listen!

In a nondescript dressing room backstage at the O2 Academy, Ryan Jarman, guitarist of Wakefield trio The Cribs, tells me the story of the  band since their first show in Oxford  11 years ago.

Then, the three Jarmans, Ryan, twin Gary and younger brother Ross,  were touring relentlessly following the release of their raw and self-produced eponymous debut . They often played for free or multiple times a night in tiny venues, to hone their act and raise their profile. But Ryan is far from nostalgic for those early days, happy to move on to bigger and better things. “We’ve already had that intimacy”, he tells me.

Now, the band are playing in support of their sixth record, For All My Sisters. This is the first release following their move to Sony from the independent Wichita Recordings. “I feel like our relationship had changed a little”, Jarman explains, though alas without further elaboration . But it’s been a very positive move, he tells me.  “Because we’ve been around for so long, they know what band they’re getting, so we’re kind of more independent than before”.

More than just the label has changed since those early days. Though Ross has remained in Wakefield (where a plaque commemorates the city’s most famous musical sons), Ryan now lives in New York and Gary is based in Portland, Oregon. Ryan sees this as broadening the band’s musical horizons. “If we all still lived together, we’d have a lack of inspiration. Now we’re all very different people, who bring different things to the table.” Indeed, Ryan delights in telling me about his projects outside of The Cribs, including forming a band with his American wife as well as collaborating with Julian Casablancas of The Strokes.

But it’s not all different on this album for The Cribs. Jarman tells me how it represents something of a return to an earlier sound.  The band’s third album, Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, progressed from their initial lo-fi offerings (being slickly produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand) and  propelled them into the realm of critical and commercial success. Subsequently, ex-The Smiths and Modest Mouse guitarist Johnny Marr joined the band from 2008 to 2011. “Once that record came out, Johnny joined the band and that took us in a different direction. Then Johnny left, and that sent us off in another completely different direction”. Thus, whereas Jarman describes their previous release, In the Belly of the Brazen Bull, as “dark, heavy and sprawling”, he sees their newest record as “a bit more stripped back, a bit simpler, a bit poppier” – the follow-up to Men’s Needs… that never was.

Out on stage, Esper Scout and The Wytches warm up the crowd with a punchy style clearly influenced by heavy listening to The Cribs in their formative years (“It makes us feel old”, Jarman had told me earlier). However, they received a fairly lukewarm reception from a crowd clearly full of ardent fans awaiting their heroes. Jarman had told me they ” try to keep it as interesting as possible… we do everything to make sure this doesn’t feel like a job” by avoiding endless repetition of setlists and trying to focus on newer material. Though, of course, this is hard to balance against the demands of a crowd yearning  for the hits. Indeed, their efforts to rest fan favourite Another Number earlier in this tour were curtailed when the crowd  began to sing the characteristic riff as they attempted another song.

The band’s 90 minute set was well-received by the energetic and engaged crowd, who went wild for classics such as “Hey Scenesters” and “Mirror Kissers”, and rapidly warmed to the diverse introductions from the new album, including the catchy “Burning for No One”, the Weezer-esque “An Ivory Hand” (the album is produced by Ric Ocasek, who worked on Weezer’s Blue album) and the swirling, mesmeric “Pink Snow”,  which ended their sweaty set.

The Cribs are a remarkable band. They’ve released six albums that are each unique and special in their own way, yet they’re able to deftly blend choice pickings from each together to create a phenomenal live set. From the performance given tonight, and the bubbling enthusiasm of the Jarman brothers for their music and their fans, it’s clear this will continue for many years and albums to come.