Audio Journal: 04/03/2014 - R5, IndigO2, London

When did teen-rock get so grown-up?

Last night we found ourselves at IndigO2 for a concert by R5. Never heard of them? Neither would I were it not for my seven-year-old eldest daughter's love of two Disney Channel shows - the series Austin And Ally and that channel's film Teen Beach Movie.

Both star a blonde, tousle-haired young guy called Ross Lynch, who as well as singing through both shows also happens to be a guitarist and vocalist in a band called R5, thus named because the group consists of Lynch and sundry brothers (and a sister).

So, at least on 'paper' this all sounds like familiar Disney territory - a young heartthrob, a contract with Disney's Hollywood Records label, a slight whiff of the manufactured boyband (except for the girl, of course). But then there are the following facts that need to be borne in mind:

• They play real instruments, live, with no backing tapes or miming or anything like that
• They have an album's worth of really good, comparatively mature songs that owe more to sun-drenched California than teen-pop
• They rock

Pop music, at its most irritating, has an infectious, subversive quality. It also has the capacity to feel artificial, churned-out on some vast production line under Communist-era-style portraiture of some gurning industry oligarch like Simon Cowell. R5, in contrast to a One Direction or whoever else the kids are listening to these days, feel like a proper band that just happen to have received a massive break thanks to their frontman, who, on the evidence of his onstage demeanour, is more than happy to just be a part of the band rather than accept the nominal limelight.

Ross Lynch's humble role in the band may have, however, been lost on an audience of swooning girls and their mothers. And fair enough. Plus it's sort of nice to see kids following what looks and feels like a proper band compared to some of the horrors available out there.

This was my eldest daughter's first full concert (her first concert proper was the Chili Peppers at Knebworth in 2012, but she fell asleep early on in the set and we left), and also the first concert for our six-year-old youngest daughter. Both had a great time. As did their mother.

As did I.