The Sonics, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

There is a sign that adorns the wall above the stage in the Brudenell; you’ll recognise the one if you’ve been, it says ‘Welcome to the Brudenell’ with a moon, sun and stars painted around it. It always reminds me of one of those bars in American films where the protagonist walks in, a band is playing and the crowd is hollering and having it up, and it usually ends in a full scale brawl.

Luckily there usually isn’t a brawl, because we’re not on a Hollywood film set and the Brudenell invites an all-round mellower vibe than this. When the lights are low and the music is loud, though, it can definitely cause a feeling of filmic déjà vu – not least when the band on stage are US garage rock originators The Sonics, giving the night as outright a blue collar Americana feel as is humanly possible. I am sitting in the main bar when the muffled opening chords of ‘Cinderella’ ring out and I join the general exodus of gig-goers toward the music room.

The band themselves even look the part of Hollywood's idea of a bar band - black trousers and embroidered cowboy shirts abound both on stage and in the audience - and they tear into a set which combines songs from their first two records with some choice cuts from a new release scheduled to come out later this year.

Their hits keep the purists happy while the rawness of their new material makes a very clear point; they might be advancing in years, but they aren’t in any way close to done. Perhaps there is less physical movement on stage than in their heyday, but the impact of the music is still visceral. The group’s rendition of ‘Louie Louie’, in particular, stands out; with its slightly adjusted chord pattern producing a crunching, menacing mirror image of the much-covered original.

The main body of the show closes with ‘Psycho’, which sounds as vital as it must have done on stage in 1965, with only the briefest of pauses before a return to the fray with a cover of Ray Charles’ ‘I Don’t Need No Doctor’. This is followed with the 1-2 punch of ‘Strychnine’ and ‘The Witch’, in no uncertain terms putting an exclamation point on the gig. For once, no one is shouting for more – they know what they are here for, and the band have delivered. It is only half past ten, but everyone is more than happy with the set they have witnessed. Despite a change in rhythm section in the intervening years it is perfectly clear that, almost 50 years since their debut EP Here Are The Sonics, the group are still the raucous grandfathers of punk.