These days even brief exposure to sex, drugs and rock'n'roll seems to break musicians. Every week another album appears accompanied by confessions of anxiety, addiction and breakdown. Danny McCormack, however, is different. Formerly the bassist in the Wildhearts, he went into rehab when they fell apart in 1997. No sooner had he cleaned up than he was back on the beer with his new gang, the Yo-Yos.

The Yo-Yos enter in a chaos of quiffs, cigarette smoke and swearing. McCormack, Red Stripe aloft, is "bladdered". The crowd, all axle-grease and leather, roar approvingly. It's yer rock'n' roll basics, innit?

As is the music. The ad once taken out by McCormack and guitarist/vocalist Tom Spencer sought someone who "appreciates good melody and can string at least three and a half chords together". Which is about the size of these sporadically great tunes. Champagne and Nakedness and Rumble(d) have basslines that sound like someone twanging overhead electricity cables. The three frontmen (they eventually hired guitarist/vocalist Neil Phillips) swap sweet, surf's-up harmonies and the sort of gravelly lead vocals you only get from smoking tarmac. As their debut album, Uppers and Downers, illustrated, however, the Yo-Yos have a tendency toward Green Day blandness, too, not to mention Status Quo.

Indeed, there's more than a bit of the pub-rockers about the Yo-Yos. Beers and jeers are swapped between band and crowd. And while McCormack stops one fan homophobically insulting another, the chants about beer and the band's demands for "tits out down the front" are plain boorish.

Still, you can't deny the power of the closing batch of songs. In fact, the hammering go-faster blur of Keepin' On, Keepin' On alone just about makes this a night worth remembering.