There was a time when young girls aspired not to adopt the yoga positions of Madonna or wear the faux-sexy grin of Britney but instead pull on a baby-doll night-dress and walk and talk like Courtney Love. And while the original riot grrrls of the 1990s now take their tips from Vogue, Twist have arrived to pick up the discarded grunge guitar sound and give it a good teenage kicking.

The four girls start the sprawling, bawling rock of Feed with their scowls firmly in place. Not that the perma-glares hide the fact that right from the first screech they're having the time of the lives.

Because, although their mates are doubtless back in their home town of Birmingham shaking off cider-induced hangovers, Twist are reclaiming the sub-pop sound as their own, dressed in regulation T-shirts and jeans and staring at their guitars intently. All except singer Emma Fox, who stares wilfully into the crowd, her fingers finding the frets of her low-slung guitar on their own, her voice Lolitaesque above a melody that could almost be pop until it's smeared with riffs and menacing drums.

Twist make songs for broken-hearted girls who aren't content to sit in a corner and cry, but choose instead to shriek and plead, determined that if they're going to hurt, you're going to know about it. And this time the angst is for real. "I hope you all had a good new year," Fox tells us. "I didn't. I ended up beating my boyfriend up, then dumping him."

If anyone is picture perfect to become a poster girl for riot grrrl power, it's Fox.

With her long blonde hair alternately framing her face or hiding it as she staggers around the stage, bent forward, her head almost touching her guitar strings during Lay Low, she has the baby face of Debbie Harry, the hoarse vocals of Love and the scratchy attitude of Justine Frischmann, yet is still enough of a schoolgirl to smile sweetly at the crowd jumping at her feet. And, along with her bandmates, she's a confident and intense performer.

Lead guitarist Vanessa White is all midriff and feedback, her jarring notes during My Love for Amber providing interest among the jagged rock. And while sometimes Twist veer too close to Hole territory for comfort, Fourteen provides a glimpse of a more "chilled-out" route, as Fox calls it, the stage flooded in blue light as her vocals become softer and Lisa Lavery's basslines get darker.

It proves that if Twist deviate just a little further from the grunge blueprint, they could leave all the comparisons and competition behind.