Wild Flag / Peggy Sue @ Òran Mór, 30 January

Both of tonight’s acts, while ostensibly steeped in well-trodden approaches to rock, manage to infuse their music with bursts of startling vitality. For the Brighton-based trio Peggy Sue, that involves entwining rockabilly foundations with grinding, trebly riffs and powerful, wailing female vocals; it’s a mixture that recalls PJ Harvey’s early, primal indie-blues, although there’s a poppiness here that makes Peggy Sue more instantly accessible.

On record, Wild Flag’s sound doesn’t always build significantly on that of Sleater-Kinney; yet live, it’s evident that Janet Weiss’ masterful drumming and Carrie Brownstein’s chunky riffs combine in thrilling and unexpected ways with Mary Timony’s guitar and Rebecca Cole’s keyboards. Where Corin Tucker’s guitarwork was impressively restrained and riff-centred, Timony indulges gleefully in spaced-out soloing and wig-outs: tracks like Glass Tambourine emerge as full-blown rock epics in this context.

For most acts, embracing rock orthodoxy in this way would result in a stale approach, unable to shake off the weight of its own influences. Yet Wild Flag somehow recapture the thrilling exuberance of the 70s post-punk and classic rock that underpins their sound. The secret, as both acts demonstrate tonight, is to channel the spirit of that inspiration, without being entirely in thrall to it.