At ADC’s Tuesday night late show, two of Cambridge's most whimsical, playful and spirited bands stormed the stage and transformed the sophisticated, stylish atmosphere of the theatre into a wonderful explosion of noise, energy and laughter. I've never felt the ADC’s seats shake so much, which was the result both of laughing, and of an impulsive desire to get up and dance.

The Staircase Band are rooted in the history of Balkan music and folklore, in magic, and in all things cosmic. As an expression of their delighted, excited, up and down exuberance, two particularly enthusiastic members out of the 7 (sometimes 8) frantically grasped at opposite ends of a single violin bow with their teeth, wildly skidding the instrument backwards and forwards between the two of them. This is a band which is absurdly conscious of history and time, and is therefore well suited for a city like Cambridge: one which is ingrained in the vast history of folk.

Headlining the show was Truly Medley Deeply, a band which is entrenched in the comic rather than the cosmic Cambridge. The band have recently played the 2011 Varsity Ski Trip and Edinburgh Fringe Festival and are in the tradition of great daft comedy/ medley bands like 60's Barron Knights and New Zealanders Flight of the Concords. In their matching red, green and yellow body suits, their craftily muddled-up songs are ones which we can all recognize. For the ‘Embarrassing Illness Medley’ (red power ranger Nick Goodwin has his leg bandaged up as a result of a recent Varsity Ski Trip-related accident), we are mentally shifted through an eclectic mixture of 'ill' songs, from Johnny Cash's 'Hurt' to Berlin's 'Take My Breath Away'. Wearing green, Dom Johnpillai's voice switches tones wonderfully in the ‘Highly Sexualized 90s Female Medley’. The man in yellow, Charlie Cotton, eagerly whisks us through the ‘Spontaneous Medley’ on his mandolin, and audience members request an odd mix of 'Hey There, Delilah', 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', 'New York' and 'You're the One That I Want', to name a just a few of their repertoire.

As well as being a band which is remarkably funny and engaging – they received delighted cheers when the audience recognized songs in disguise - what makes the band really successful is that they are actually very good musicians. In a time of so much blandly recycled music, Truly Medley Deeply take these familiar pop songs and analytically break them down to their basics. When the songs are stripped bare, it becomes apparent how similar and repetitive they are, but also how cleverly they've been constructed and how their best bits are so irresistible. The songs work best melded and mashed together because they are songs for, and about, being together. Truly Medley Deeply are lively collagists who present pop music as the great act of togetherness that it is. What they are doing is actually quite a radical idea - with people questioning whether new and original music can exist any longer or whether it's all been done before, Truly Medley Deeply slyly create something new out of the old by breaking pop into bits.