Local duo Little Fish — Juju Heslop and Nez Greenaway — have had an excellent couple of years. Grafting away since 2006, they recorded their debut album Baffled and Beat with Linda Perry, the songwriter behind many of both Pink and Christina Aguilera’s biggest hits. They’re about to start work on a second album, but are winding up the year with a small tour and damn near sell out their Oxford show.

Much material can be traced back to the artist from whose lyrics they take their name, PJ Harvey. Heslop’s vocal style is in the same vein as Harvey’s, full of angst and bile one moment and then of earnest pleading in a split second. Harvey has built a career from making records that seem as raw as open wounds with professional precision. Little Fish are scruffier and more raucous, with a 60s rock’n’roll feel to much of their material. For live shows they draft in a Hammond organ that powers most of their poppier tracks. This is most evident on their closing track Innuendo, whose chorus that could have been lifted straight from a Chuck Berry track. Elsewhere, their music is a fiery re-telling of bile drenched alt rock, with Bikini Kill, Hole and Patti Smith springing to mind as key influences. The band command the stage well. Heslop throws herself around with complete abandon and seems absolutely and totally lost in the music. They power through their 45 minutes, giving it everything they have. If they make a good second album, they’ll be filling places like this all over the country.