There will be a review here soon, of Lady Gaga at the Cardiff CIA, maybe even in the next day or so if I’m on form. It puts into perspective how hard writing can be, how limiting your own language is, when you can’t find any word to describe how mindblowing, how spectacular, how iconic, and how inhuman in her performing perfection Lady Gaga really is. There are no words, just a pang of genuine sadness that I’ll probably never witness another gig like that again, worry that someone who burns so strongly and so brightly can’t persist at her momentum, nostalgia that would be more fitting for Woodstock or Live Aid, and bewilderment, wonder at how something could fall to earth with such talent.

   The Madonna comparisons are shown up to be lazy and uninformed. Her influences such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury are far more fitting. Lady Gaga, in every sense, is the Spider From Mars. She is Lady Stardust. She is the spirit of hundreds and thousands of people clapping in time to Radio Gaga in 1985.

   There will be a review here, but consider this a pre-review, a reaction, a desperate need to expel the effects of last night onto a page without regards for cohesion or order.

   There will be words. Later. But I may have to invent new ones.

Let’s get this straight. I am vehemently against new bands and prone to reading NME articles in WH Smith with a look of superior disgust on my face before walking home to a soundtrack of Oasis and David Bowie.

   However, once in a while, I stumble across someone who genuinely excites me, who can induce a strange Tourettes-like state whereby I recount the artist/band’s name plus a rambling stream of trivia at people I barely know.

   “Don’t you think Tom Clarke from The Enemy sounds like the love-child of Johnny Lydon and a young Paul Weller?”

   “That’s very nice, miss, but the newspaper is a pound…”

   You get the idea.

   So, Delphic. My first impression of them wasn’t the best, as the second support act before Kasabian at Myspace’s celebratory gig in Heaven, London. Their roadies took a monstrous hour and a half to set up their equipment, pushing Kasabian towards a 23:00 start that would cause me to miss my train. It wasn’t the band’s fault, but I was determined not to enjoy them. They could have come onstage dressed as Cuban revolutionaries on the shoulders of Joe Strummer and I still would have glared at them, silently, arms crossed across the barrier, and muttering about Kasabian all set. In much the same way that I wilfully ignore any band hyped by NME, I chose not to hear them.

   Fast-forward three months and a friend offered me a ticket to a gig of theirs not twenty minutes down the road. Pressured by her enthusiasm and the reasonable price I agreed and, with somewhat less enthusiasm, bought the album, Acolyte.

   It starts with Clarion Call. This opener, like the album itself, starts deceptively quiet before building into something so preposterously epic for a debut that it will have you jamming your head into the speakers, screaming, “More! Moooooore, I say!”

   There are echoes of New Order but no imitation, just pure electro-pop brilliance. Disregard the fact that one of the keyboard players looks like Gary Neville finding his true calling and focus on songs like This Momentary, that are almost hypnotic in their quality. Their vocalist and guitarist has a voice of appealing fragility, but capable of unexpected power, especially in Doubt and Submission.

   Doubt also demonstrates the simple intelligence of the lyrics. Without any of the clichés or laddish posturing that a lot of new bands succumb to, Doubt is a sincere and gentle attack of electro-beats and guitar.

   The real gem of the album however is the single, Halcyon. Halcyon is the sort of song with a chorus so catchy, so flawless, so painfully gorgeous, that I could be tempted to withdraw from society completely and sit, alone, ipod plugged into the wall with it on repeat for the rest of my life, rocking backwards and forwards with my hands over the earphones, salivating like a modern-day Gollum. When I heard Halcyon for the first time I forgot that other music existed for about three days, and it was only due to a technical fault and an accidental switch to Alabama 3 that I remembered, for the sake of my sanity and social appearance, that I would have to listen to other songs once in a while.

   Acolyte has managed to temporarily drag my cynical heart out of the 70s and, were it not for the narrow-minded attitude of Western civilisation, I would elope with one of its tracks and fulfil its every sexual need.

   I haven’t been to their gig yet, but I’m sure I’ll dance like a lunatic.

   Buy it. For the love of God, buy it.

John and Edward Grimes.

   No, really.

   You may think that I’ve finally lost my mind and turned to hallucinogenic drugs to get myself through life but, really, I haven’t. I’m being 100% serious. Or as serious as you can be when talking about these identical quiffed Irish invaders of the UK Charts.

   I’ll put it concisely: I adore Jedward, and this is my case as to why.

   After much moaning, raised eyebrows, sighs, and restrained cynicism, I agreed to take my little sister and cousin to see X Factor Live. It was, in my eyes, nothing more than a poor reason to miss Manchester United winning the Carling Cup Final and a blemish to my rock ’n’ roll credentials. I was prepared to listen to nothing but The Skids for a week as penance to reclaim my kudos.

   If anyone had told me that the endearingly tuneless twins John and Edward would steal the show I’d have dismissed them as someone who needed to quickly see the inside of a padded cell. But, putting aside my hatred of X Factor and its stranglehold on the music industry as we know it, they did.

   John and Edward, I realised, represent more of a two-fingered salute to X Factor than Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas Number One did. They are the contraband box of ecstasy pills in The Priory, the sly injection of chaos that turns a peaceful protest into a full-on riot. They sing passably, by no means well, but became bigger than the show that made them with nothing more than reckless optimism and a euphoric hyperactivity both onstage and off. Through a combination of national pride and public frustration with the generic manure that reality TV propels into our consciousness year after year, they have become stars. Not just pop stars doomed to live forever with the smoking brand of X Factor across their foreheads, but actual stars.

   To see them onstage is to have a seven-inch psychotic smile on your face and aching ribs for hours afterwards, because what you’re seeing isn’t a shopwork mannequin, it is two eighteen-year-old boys doing whatever the hell they want. From Under Pressure to Rock DJ to Ghostbusters, cavorting with water pistols and inflatable ghosts, one twin dancing slightly out of time with the other, talking in faux American accents, and dressed like the love-children of James Bond and Nicky Wire, they are undeniably joyous to witness.

   ”Have fun - that’s our plan at all times,” John recently said to Q Magazine. “When you look at some artists you can see there’s something missing when you look into their eye. They’re trudging through a performance. We’re thinking, Who’s let us on this stage? It’s just amaaaaazing. We’ll never lose the feeling that we’re the luckiest guys ever for being allowed near a stage.”

   Also, in a true rock ‘n’ roll initiation, they have Noel Gallagher’s mobile number and implied endorsement. “He’s been really supportive so we got his number and we’ve been texting him,” said Edward in the same interview. Now that is an exchange I would have paid money to see.

   They are rock ‘n’ roll. Those who complain that they can’t sing are missing the point. A non-believer friend remarked on their cover of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure (that has shot to Number One in Ireland and Number Two in the UK) with a cold, “I bet Freddie Mercury is turning in his grave.”

   I’m not so sure. They may not have enough power between them to match even one of Freddie’s magnificent vocal chords, however they must represent everything positive that he once sang about. They are, in every sense, the champions. Hell, they are the Bohemian fucking Rhapsody.

   Freddie Mercury would not be turning in his grave to see these fellas doing what they so obviously love to do. He’d be dancing.