Clap Your Hands Say Yeah @ Barrowlands

It is appropriate, perhaps, that one of the hotly tipped acts of this year tonight share the bill with one of last year's. Cold War Kids (4/5) don't have much time to convince us, though they don't need long. An energetic blend of classic and innovative rock is well received and by way of introduction will do the band no harm at all.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah take the Barrowlands stage to give their second album a workout in a week that saw it released to starkly contrasting reviews. In the live arena, out of the confines of the studio, this is an opportunity to showcase the songs with a freedom and rawness that is reminiscent of their eponymous debut LP.

On record, Alec Ounsworth sounds deceptively animated. Tonight, the band assume a more professional demeanour, workmanlike almost, but manage to convey the frolicsome nature of their sound effortlessly. Both albums get a substantial airing with respective centrepieces, Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth and Satan Say Dance, instigating the kind of raucous scenes they were designed to. Favourites like Home On Ice and Tidal Wave are greeted with a feverish excitement that few of the new tracks are yet to generate, but the underlying quality is unmistakable. [Finbarr Bermingham]