Lost Map’s Christmas Humbug!, Old Hardresser’s, Glasgow ****

Scottish record label Christmas parties are a fond seasonal tradition, and it's a market which Johnny "Pictish Trail” Lynch’s Eigg-based Lost Map Records has cornered in recent years. The weekend saw a two-legged affair which ended at Edinburgh’s Summerhall on Saturday night, after this late-night, club-timed concert in a sociably crowded backroom up a Glasgow alley.

Beyond the decoration of tinsel, a little Christmas tree and beer cans littering the speaker stands, genuinely seasonally-themed treats were in short supply, although Lynch himself paid tribute to the recently deceased Mimi Parker of indie band Low with a cover of their Just Like Christmas. Maranta, one of the five billed acts, had to cancel at the last moment due to illness, so Lynch’s unbilled acoustic set was an unexpected alternative treat for Lost Map regulars.

Featuring friends of the imprint and artists Lynch has been enjoying recently, the others on offer split neatly into two camps. The first of these included Fell, a group led by London-based musician, songwriter and illustrator Nicolas Burrows, and Glasgow group Sulka. Each played conventional, guitar-led indie-pop with a twist, in Fell’s case as a blend of mellow, fisherman's hatted indie and little jazz excursions, and in Sulka’s with a crisply melodic and harmonic style of songwriting.

The other artists were of the kind which end up seared onto your brain after a single viewing. The most exciting set of the evening came from Glasgow all-female trio Brenda, playing impudent, inventive and extremely DIY punk-pop, their name daubed on a collapsing bedsheet behind them, like they were signalling to the media from the roof of a prison riot.

They blended rudimentary dreampop anthems with patchy rock guitar soloing, a threatened EDM finale and an acapella chorus of Enrique Iglesias’ Hero for Lynch when he turned up to sort some technical fault or other. The weird energy of their set was matched, long past midnight, by that of Catgut, one thunderous drummer and one shrieking, chanting, writhing singer. It was Christmas, but not as we know it.

Music review: Lost Map’s Christmas Humbug, Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow