Making its debut this year, OX4 Festival aims to be Oxford’s answer to the Camden Crawl. Founded by local upstarts, You! Me! Dancing! and OX festival kings, Truck, it works in much the same way as London’s Camden Crawl. Ten venues, all on the Cowley Road, boasting stellar music line-ups, workshops and the chance to get cheaply well oiled. The Cowley Road is always bustling with activity, but the arrival of OX4 seems to give this thoroughfare an even more vibrant energy. There’s Fairtrade produce as far as the eye can see, hordes of punters covered in blue face paint, campaigners running around with countless clipboards and applause drifting from every doorway.

The day starts with local quartet Cat Matador and their brand of unimposing indie, in the East Oxford Community Centre. Given it’s barely 5pm, the band draw a pretty decent crowd and deliver a tight, if slightly disjointed set. Their tracks, especially new release Eyes, have a lilting quality, like a toned down Broken Social Scene or a less intense Dears. Bizarrely, though, singer Liam feels compelled to apologise after every track; he shouldn’t worry, his band could be on to something special.

Next in the same spot, Dial F For Frankenstein are a lot more ramshackle. Clearly brought up on choice cuts from 90s grunge, the four-piece possess the raw materials for some decent songs, but today seem a bit wayward in their delivery and only manage to extract a muted reaction from the crowd.

By far the biggest draw of the day and the only band on the bill without an OX postcode, rising London duo The Big Pink (pictured) deliver an outstanding set. Playing to a packed O2 Academy, the pair’s fusion of steel-edged industrial stomp and crushing choruses goes down a storm. Tonight, Too Young to Love and the killer Dominos all sound fantastic and worthy of the biggest headline spots.

The day ends with an acoustic performance by Alphabet Backwards upstairs in Baby Simple, where the crowd are quite literally packed into the corners. They were drafted in as last-minute replacements, but singer James makes a decent solo fist of his band’s fluffy pop songs. Lyrically, his brand of urban poetry is more Just Jack than Alex Turner, but it’s charming enough.

For a debut festival, OX4 was an outstanding success. It attracted, in the end, a sell-out crowd, created a wonderful atmosphere and saw some great performances. If there’s one criticism to be made, it’s that with The Big Pink being the only non-Oxford-based act, OX4 suffered a little from a lack of diversity in the artists on show. But hopefully next year, with more of a profile and potentially more money to spend, the festival might be able to attract acts from further afield. Nevertheless, OX4 is a welcome addition to the festival season and another impressive string to Truck’s ever growing bow.