Twisted Wheel

Named after Manchester's storied central soul venue, the Oldham trio Twisted Wheel assembled around guitarist and frontman Jonny Brown, bassist Richard Lees, and drummer Adam Clarke. Emerging in February 2007 from the remains of Brown and Clarke's prior '60s rock outfit the Children, the gritty, unkempt indie rock three-piece infused with punk attitude played their inaugural show just seven days after forming.

Like several fellow U.K. acts of the period, notably Dundee's the View and Coventry's the Enemy, the band fixated on the jagged urgency of the Jam, the Clash, and Oasis. Their gritty, high-voltage demo reached the shared idol Paul Weller through Clint Boon, the ex-Inspiral Carpets keyboardist, fellow Oldham indie figure, and XFM DJ. The introduction brought a series of support slots with the former Jam singer plus the chance to record at his Surrey studio.

Home-town loyalty, mounting online traction, and the group's assured work ethic secured a Columbia contract that yielded the July 2008 7-inch "You Stole the Sun." The single thrust Brown's coarse, thickly accented vocals forward while its verses adopted the doubled tempo common to U.S. hardcore acts such as NOFX. Later releases, among them November's "Lucy the Castle" and especially the following year's "We Are Us," remained faithful to the blunt, no-frills British indie template of Oasis, who invited Twisted Wheel to open several large European dates in 2008 and 2009.

Echoing the Beatles' one-day completion of Please Please Me in 1963, Brown laid down every vocal for the self-titled debut during a single 24-hour Los Angeles session. Produced by Dave Sardy and issued to mixed notices in April 2009, the album retained the same youthful drive that animated their concerts and much of the post-Arctic Monkeys mainstream U.K. alternative rock of the early twenty-first century.