What makes a memorable night out is a sufficient dose of chance and randomness. Mood Swings promises that, from the musty bookcases in a corner to the Star Wars cardboard cutout that stands above the front door.

Don’t dismiss all this as kitsch or let the slightly seedy front put you off. Mood Swings is a place with priorities and the bar’s raison d’être is simple: to be a bar and nothing else. Sounds simple, but it isn’t always put into practice. ‘A lot of places are clubs disguised as bars’, says owner Ravi ‘the Rat’, who runs the joint with his Australian wife, Susan Louise Tennent.

They succeed. There’s little here to confuse things – bottles behind the bar, regulars perched atop bar stools, a pool table in the corner and some cosy nooks where deep conversations about philosophy and time can take place. All in all, it’s a bar or – and they take great pride in this – the only classic retro bar in KL.

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll know what we mean when we say it reminds us of Waikiki, that legendary watering hole in PJ that stayed open long after all the clubs in town played their last tune. Don’t get too excited though. You’ll hate Mood Swings if your idea of fun is whipping out glow sticks on the dance floor. Here, you’re more likely to hear ‘Smoke on the Water’ by Deep Purple, and know this: the bar has absolute autonomy over what tracks get played (says so in the bar rules).

A live cover band performs on Thursday and Friday nights, and there’s also a pool tournament on the latter. And whilst Ravi did tell us about  the provenance of the bar, we’re not allowed to regale you with the full tale. However, we can tell you that it used to be a Latin club, then a feng tau haunt and then Mood Swings exactly a year ago this month.

It has to be said the regulars, whilst mostly benign, came on a little strong when we visited (four girls, easy prey in the savage jungle that is the KL night scene). Flattering but we cannot fathom why when Mood Swings’ two bar staff look like lanky Eastern European models (true story). Which brings us back to the randomness of this bar. Tucked away behind Lot10, décor still bearing traces of its previous incarnation, a truly random crowd of regulars, expatriates and walk-ins, then one very odd thing – Ravi points out the nine cats in the mural behind the pool table and likens it to the nine lives of this place.

In this life, Mood Swings would be a tabby with a stubby tail that struts around confidently. Their humorous bar rules starts off with ‘We @ Mood Swings do not believe the customer is always right… if you do, you will be wrong’ and it’s this cocksure flair that makes this little spot, oddly, kinda great. It’s not pretending to be something it’s not, tells its patrons not to ‘behave like a drunk monkey’ (see rules) and, well, remember that Star Wars cut-out? Rachel Jena