“Screw this, let’s go somewhere else.” In true British urban festival style, our original plans were sunk by long queues, heavy drizzle and the lead weight of impatience.

So instead of catching Dananan-aykroyd and Black Lips at Audio, we trudged up to the Ocean Rooms hoping that what the organisers claim about these types of events was true: festivals like the Great Escape are all about accidentally stumbling upon great bands who’ll be playing stadiums in a few years.

And you know what? The hype was almost right.

Out of the three acts we managed to catch, one was half-decent, the second was unusual and the third was just a damn good laugh.

Heading downstairs we came across Cursive, a three-piece from Omaha, Nebraska.

Talking about stadiums, their bombastic, early U2-influenced rock music was delivered with such confidence it was as if they were already imagining themselves atop a raised platform in the middle of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, rather than playing to a half-full back-street nightclub in Brighton.

Full credit for trying, but there was something about Cursive’s sheer technical proficiency that was hard to warm to. It didn’t help that the lead singer had one of those hackneyed, grungy screams which sounds like a crying child running up a gravel path.

To paraphrase Monty Python, next came something completely different.

According to her website, thecocknbullkid is Anita Blay, a Ghanian-born singer fronting an all-white pop-electro band from London.

With a voice that was more Cocteau Twins than Aretha Franklin, Anita fluttered over sparky beats and delicate guitar lines in a way that pleasingly resembled very little that you can hear on the radio at the moment.

The only slight drawback was that her vocals were too low in the mix, meaning she never got the chance to fill the basement of the Ocean Rooms the way she should have done.

Thinking that was it for a Thursday night, it was a real bonus to walk upstairs and straight into the last half of Baddies’ closing set.

Clad in a uniform of sky-blue shirts buttoned up Mod-style, the Southend foursome appear to have gone to the same school of shouty punk that taught The Hives everything they knew about dressing up and freaking out.

While lyrics such as “we beat our chest” were about as sophisticated as a hammer, Baddies were dumb but never, ever dull.

They stamped a great big exclamation point at the end of a top quality night.