You can tell the gig is over when the drummer falls off his stool and sends his kit skittling all over the floor. You think it's over when, during 'Phobias', the singer jumps into the audience and tries a few Iggy-ish intimidation techniques. But then he leaps back onstage, high kicks unsteadily, promptly slides flat on his back and carries on. This, the history books would have you believe, is rock'n'roll as it was meant to be: shambolic, wasted, irreversibly in your face.
Watching Love As Laughter, at their first ever British headline show, it occurs that, sometimes, the cliched ways are the best. These three men and one woman from Seattle represent the peak of psychotic artschool ramalam, a garage band dedicated to abrasive noise and desiccated melody. They are, let's not mess about, absolutely bloody marvellous!
There are links here to the feverish crop of new guitar heroes from the American underground, the manically testifying likes of At The Drive-In, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and Les Savy Fav. Love As Laughter have been around slightly longer, though, with singer/guitarist Sam Jayne leading a variety of line-ups through three albums, culminating in last year's superb 'Destination 2000' on Sub Pop. You may recall Jayne, too from Beck's lovely acoustic 'One Foot In The Grave' LP - he's the kid on the sleeve who looks, improbably, even younger than Beck.
All this is scant preparation, however, for the live onslaught of Love As Laughter. Frankly, they make a cataclysmic racket: two wild detuned guitars, a barely audible bass, an animalistic drummer who keeps dropping his sticks. What they play is a frayed futurist version of New York artpunk, taking in elements of The Velvet Underground's mercury chug ('What Goes On' is covered, dementedly), New York Dolls raunch, the wiry tension of Television and The Voidoids, and Sonic Youth's clangorous dynamism.
Which adds up - on current single 'My Case' or 'On The Run', say - to a beautiful, chaotic noise. That's Love As Laughter: updating a grand tradition, decimating the opposition. And, as the drummer brandishes bits of gear confusedly, possibly self-destructing, too. Good work.
