Hot Chip @ HMV Picture House, 13 Feb

Hot Chip attract an unusual Saturday night audience blend: part muso, part fashionista, part clubber. So credit to support band Casiokids for appealing to all-comers with their calypso-coated, funk-fuelled electro-soul. The Norwegian synth children (well, 20-somethings) demonstrate an on-stage enthusiasm that gradually infects the entire room, and with set-closer Fot I Hose, they have a tune with enough rump-shaking verve to upstage tonight's headliners.

But at this point in their career, now four albums deep, Hot Chip know exactly how to push the live buttons - quite literally, judging by the multitude of electronics on stage. New LP One Life Stand forms the backbone of this show, but there's always room for retinted versions of old favourites like Boy From School, Ready For the Floor and Over and Over, a track always guaranteed to test a venue's foundations when the crowd starts bouncing en masse.

But even a tightly-packed, sold out Picture House survives any structural stress, leaving the diminutive Alexis Taylor and his backers to try out more new material, including a 'world premiere' of Brothers and the swarthy Thieves in the Night. But it's the new album's title track, a shape-shifting love song built on steel drum, syncopated synths and rhythm guitar, that emerges as the highlight, while Take It In by comparison falls surprisingly flat. As do more sombre, soulful tracks like Slush. But these constitute the exception rather than the rule, and once again Hot Chip, the most unlikely of pop bands, knock out a crowd-pleasing set that underscores their multi-faceted appeal. [Nick Mitchell]