It was remarked by more than one performer that the annual Gappy Tooth Industries/ Swiss Concrete jamboree had been very unfortunately named, thanks to the Jericho’s sado-masochist central heating schedule, which meant that we were all freezing our nuts off for the first five hours. Bang up job, Mitchell and Butler, you useless chumps.

Fortunately, the event started brilliantly, with a superb, danceable set from Space Heroes of the People, a duo creating groove-laden tune-filled Kraftwerkia. Tim Science is an extremely gifted programmer, but he is the antithesis of the heads-down boffin, singing, banging a Linn Drum and making self-deprecating jokes in between tracks. Jo Edge’s sinuous double bass lines add welcome warmth and make for a more organic feel than if it were all down to the Intel. New tracks like ‘Modernist Disco’ sit snugly alongside established classics, like the wonderful ‘Groovy Dancer’ and the campest of the camp ‘Barbie is a Robot’. The only criticism is that if Tim wants his socially-aware lyrics to be heard properly, he’d better back off on the vocoder.

The Saturday was undoubtedly damaged by the withdrawal of a number of bands and their hurried replacement by singer-songwriters of variable quality. One of the better ones was The New Moon’s Matt Sewell who showed a good deal of stamina in even being able to fret his guitar, given the bleak midwinterness of the setting. He is earnest, sardonic and clever, sounding often like Crowded House’s Neil Finn, and he has a nice line in gloomy one-liners (“Time will devour you like a Mexican god”) a quality he shared with many acts on the bill.

Another no-show was Motion in Colour, who left their frontman Adam Barnes to deliver a lachrymose set of X-Factor-friendly ballads. Barnes has a high, keening voice which makes him sound unavoidably like Tracey Chapman, but he has a couple of strong tunes and one can see him selling a bunch of records so long as he isn’t torpedoed by Rage Against The Machine (the fate marvellously befalling the blameless Joe McElderry).

“Germane, Will You Marry Me?” Thus runs a piece of counter-feminist mischief from a couple of overgrown student japesters, Project Adorno. It’s very Kit and the Widow, very Flanders and Swann and very wonderful. There’s lots of inexcusable facial hair, Disco Dad dancing and more laugh-out-loud moments than in entire series of certain BBC sitcoms (Big Top, anyone?). Musically, their only prop is an acoustic guitar and a mini-disk player churning out ironic little rock and roll riffs, but the music isn’t really the point. Wit is King.

Superman Revenge Squad turned out to be equally adept verbally, but this was laughter in the dark. SRS is a nonchalantly talented acoustic guitarist, who seems to be permanently tormented by the threat of the imminent revelation of his own mediocrity. His targets are sometimes a bit soft (stadium rock is indeed heartless, artificial and stupid, but it needs no Superman to tell us this), but when he gets it right he can be both funny and moving. In one song, the sounds of a masturbating teenager heard through the walls of a suburban semi  is transmogrified by a father’s imagination into the wailing of a dragon, desperate to return to its proper dimension. This is sung with a Richard Walters-like seriousness, so that our response is one of humane sadness, rather than ribald laughter.

If SRS was able to squeeze good wine out of the bitterest of grapes, Joe Allan delivered a cloyingly awful concoction, as unpalatable as an Oz Clark ‘Christmas Tipple’ (typical recipe: ale, egg yolk and bull bollocks).  Joe has recently lost his band, and seems at a loss on his own. He boasts arguably the best voice of the event, high, keening and agile, but suffers from the weakest songs. Everything in the performance was overwrought, fussy and lame, but his interminable, arrhythmic rendering of Dylan’s exquisite ‘A Simple Twist of Fate’ turned a lousy set into a car-wreck. Come back Angharad, even if you have to commute from New South Wales.

At last, the event was able to offer a genuine, no-foolin’ band, in the form of folk-rock four-piece The Yarns. It wouldn’t be surprising if they turned out to be a clutch of final-year PPE students, such was their donnish, bookish style (one of the songs dealt with post-colonial guilt in sub-Saharan Africa) and the music was equally smart . The singer/guitarist (Jeez, I hope this is the last time in this article I need to use that phrase!) had a detached, laconic style, and was backed by an inventive, slightly smug-looking trumpeter (to be fair, he had a good deal to feel smug about-he hit all thehigh notes), and all was underpinned by a sprightly rhythm section which seemed equally adept at Paul Simon/ Vampire Weekend Afropop and laid-back ska. Playing to a merry, appreciative audience, they were the first act where the phrase Winter Warmer didn’t sound like an ironic joke. Bravo.