It's at times like this that the benefits of media shark-ery drag me back to life as a 16-year-old, middle-class 'punk'. Plucked by a bouncer from the queue on Great Eastern Street - "guestlist?" - the walk to the door is one that arouses a curious mixture of swagger and shame. Not your average 'pulled a rotter/dogger/mate's sister' type of shame, but the English variant that calls on us to play down anything that might be construed as an 'upper hand'. You could fill the Old Blue Last twice over with the queuers ahead of me, but I, with my +1, am ushered in and pointed upstairs to the bar. We are informed by the compere at various points in the evening that at least 100 people are still outside, waiting for a nod that would never, ever come.

I wanna shake the guilt, so I ask a question of my self with answers that probably won't dredge as deep, like: why do I rate The Maccabees?

That same compere gets audience members up between each band; puts a mic in front of their face and asks them to answer the same question in five words. It proves difficult and ultimately words fail them. At least it gives us all something to think about during the 150 minutes of heat that brews over and quickly engulfs the Old Blue Last and the veins of its wilting patrons.

Version 88 are first on. The four-piece are "really gonna get us going" according to the compere. This is an act of betrayal and an abuse of the microphone; I won't trust anything he says for the rest of the night so for those of you who're thinking I'm relying too heavily on him for support, he's gone. Anyway, the band - and they are a 'band' in the worst, most obvious way; every second of every song is the sound of a door to the future slamming shut; every welt of jaunty, 'good ol' R'n'R echoing the cries of the 735 Earth-bound babies born within its three minutes; screaming, wailing, howling to just get back into that snug, cosy womb hole. So yeah, the band - a touch less harmonica next time.

After the punctuation jamboree that was the last paragraph, it makes sense to get down to some plain talking with Bakery Girls. Theirs is a nostalgia of a different kind – their words are more lucid than those of the band that preceded them, but their music is nowhere near as dynamic or as thrilling as the band to follow. They pitch at wistful with heavy hearts, a weight reflected in rhythms that tend to plod even if that’s just to allow the dusty childhood boxed in the attic to open out in a spiderweb of references. Herbert Chapman – that’s one extra mark there – school books, marbles, local ends, the 73 bus. Eventually they all coagulate into something that sticks in the memory and makes sense, gives direction, even if that direction is mostly backwards and the coagulation is sweet like molasses.

Now, there's just time for a quick calculation...

150 minutes of sweat x 200 people = 30,000 sweat minutes

It's ridiculously hot now. The Old Blue Last is rammed from wall to wall, door to bar and back again. Many have downed shirts, everyone's melting in beads and patches - there is no air conditioning and the windows are all shuttered up with plastic. It comes as a relief then, when the band take the stage and saunter into 'Good Old Bill'. Immediately the failing throng is whipped up and thrown together, dancing pit like a big vat of sloppy ice cream. The music is predictable - a faithful run through of the album, albeit in a random running order - and faint faces start to smile. The band zip through everything you'd want them to play, refreshed with the heat and the feeling of the floor bowing beneath our feet.

See, I shouldn't be enjoying this. Surrounded by half-naked, sweaty men, lost in a spiky sea of nostalgia and XTC-ripping guitar. But I do. This is a band that take that nostalgia but don't give you any time at all to wallow - if the sound sinks for a second, the next it'll be tapering off on a tangential run into the blackness, with giddy guts and a buzz in the back of your skull. Their chemistry is dynamic, and they flit between the then and now - shadow boxing into the oncoming dark and boxing up the shadows left by lovers past. It's this tension that excites where others falter. Action, boys!

So why do I rate The Maccabees? I'll countdown on fingers, five words to fill in:

"Latch-mere's...got a waaave mach-ine!"

There is no time, no point in thinking on anything else.

The Maccabees were photographed by Helen Boast @ Short Sharp Shot