‘Meat-and-potatoes rock’ is the pejorative term critics use when describing groups of white men with guitars who play loud, uncomplicated music. Why would anyone enjoy such stuff, when there are the ceviches of hyperpop, the flavoured foams of experimental hip-hop, the chargrilled seasonal vegetables of jazz? Don’t they know the world has moved on?

Unfortunately, the world has a habit of not listening to the critical consensus. The highest new entry in last week’s album chart came from the Snuts, a meat-and-potatoes guitar band. This week’s No. 1 album is all but guaranteed to be by Liam Gallagher and John Squire, the Toby Carvery of meat-and-potatoes rock. As the prevalence of burger chains and chicken shops on the nation’s high street should suggest, a lot of people really, really like meat and potatoes.

There’s a sense of great comfort in encountering two guitars, a bass, drums and a singer

I do too. And I like it in music. There’s a sense of great comfort in encountering two guitars, a bass, drums and a singer, where the rules of engagement are absolutely plain. Specifically I like the kind of meat-and-potatoes rock that tends towards the melodic over the shouty, where the debt to the Rolling Stones is evident – I like a bit of roll with my rock – and where the guitar chords are palm-muted or chopped back, rather than forming an overwhelming wall of noise. If we can throw in a good lyricist – someone capable of rhymes more sophisticated than ‘desire/higher’, then we’ve hit the jackpot. But put pretty much any rock band with big riffs and big choruses in front of me and I’ll enjoy them, even if I feel no need ever to buy their records (it’s why I secretly prefer Absolute Classic Rock in the car to 6 Music).

I feel no need to return to the Glaswegian quintet Gun – who did indeed rhyme ‘desire’ and ‘higher’ in ‘All Fired Up’ – but I thoroughly enjoyed their low-key London show. They’ve been banging around since the end of the 1980s, cycling their way through lead singers and rhythm sections, getting really quite popular without ever making the leap into rock stardom. I could absolutely see why some people like them a great deal; and I could also see why the number of people who like them reached a cap.

Their catalogue is filled with hooks, riffs and choruses. Their 12-song set encompassed fuzzy glam rock (‘Here’s Where I Am’), AC/DC-esque boogie (‘Take Me Back Home’), heartland rock (‘Better Days’). It was all terrific fun – if you happen this summer to be at a festival where Gun are playing, you could do worse than sit on the grass at the back with a pint – but it was also a reminder that this is the music of a youth long past. I looked around the room and, unusual even for older bands, didn’t see a single person who looked under 50.

Scott Lavene, originally from Essex, is a mordant singer and guitarist, who writes songs that are often seemingly straightforward until it becomes apparent that they’re about his past alcohol and drug addictions. ‘Methylated Blue’, for example, was a New York love song of the kind you’ve heard a million times before, until it became clear that the lovers were wandering the city in search of somewhere to drink meths. ‘The Ballad of Lynsey’ ended with him leading the audience in a mass refrain of ‘I chose amphetamines over you’.

If you’re familiar with an old Billy Bragg B-side – his reimagining of ‘Walk Away Renée’ as a spoken narrative, backed by an instrumental – you’ll have an idea of what much of his set was like: short stories about love with a sting in the tail. Once upon a time, he’d have found a home on Stiff Records, alongside Ian Dury and Wreckless Eric, even Jona Lewie, and he’d have become a national treasure: he really is a very good writer, with an eye for the telling detail – ‘The day I passed my driving test/ I stole some roses from the garden of my racist neighbour’ – that creates vivid mental pictures.

They’re very discomfiting songs, though, which is perhaps why each time I’ve seen him, his audience has chosen to hear them as comedy. His persona is blank and matter of fact. He doesn’t steer his listeners towards any interpretation, which makes hearing them as comedy easier than confronting the fact that so many of them are really tragedies – about lives sliding out of view, about finding some compassion for those failures. It was just a man with a guitar. More meat and potatoes – but very much at the steak frites end of things.