IT'S cold. It's miserable. It's January. People's plastic is still paying for last month's chocolate oranges, yet 100 brave explorers have ventured to Fibbers to see Hope & Social.

"They're the lot that wear blue jackets!" I was told. Their reputation precedes them but audiences decide if a band is any good based on its last performance. This was my first taste of these community favourites.

Instantly there's a smile, a confidence, a swagger, a chemistry, on stage that is reflected on to the audience's faces. They know what they are doing and trust one another 100 per cent.

Who'd have thought Swanny whistle solos could stand side by side with sci-fi synth sounds, warm brass arrangements, boundless Animal energy on the drums and hilarious quips with the trumpeter? But it does!

Individually, they are accomplished players but together they create something else, something uplifting, joyous, without a ceiling. It's a carnival that's hotter than July when we're off to bed in our socks! They have an ownership of this movement they have created that fills your heart.

Any band could play these instruments and even play these songs but these ingredients have been honed and blended to bring out the best and it tastes delicious to my ears.

Simon is a disarming, charismatic frontman with a sublime power to his voice and the other boys' harmonies lock in as if on rails.

This small crowd resembles prizewinners for an intimate show at Maida Vale Studios.

The backdrop has H&S on it for Hope & Social, but on this night that could describe everyone walking back out into the bleak mid-winter January night: Happy & Satisfied.

The sound is phenomenal as Craig Rothery is clearly the ninth man and northern comic all rolled into one.

Can their music be pigeonholed? No and I love that. It doesn't fit in a pigeonhole because it's too busy dancing between genres as you try to tie it down, rhythmically diverse but never for the sake of it, with more dynamic layers than a showstopper on Bake Off.

I can't remember being this impressed first time out by a band for a very long time.

Oh yes, and they do wear blue jackets...