No Age @ Korova, Liverpool, 4 Oct

“Can someone turn that light off?” asks Dean Spunt, referring to a tiny bulb that illuminates the front row. “I think it’s making you guys a little self-conscious.” He’s half-right. There’s certainly a little discomfort among the hardcore fans gathered before them, but self-consciousness isn’t the cause.

It’s more of a disconnect between the party kids out to jump around, deliriously spilling their beers along to trashy favourites like Teen Creeps, and the chin-stroking types who’d really prefer to appreciate Randy Randall’s wickedly gnarly guitar tones, or bliss out to new LP An Object’s hazier flashes of electrified psychedelia. With some faces getting grumpy, the tension threatens to engulf the entire show – but as No Age’s performance gets rowdier, so too does the crowd surrender to rambunctiousness, building to a raucous moshpit climax as the band cover that old Black Flag standard Six Pack. They know what the kids want.

It’s no real surprise, then, that the more upbeat selections of newer material get the best reaction – Lock Box (introduced rather earnestly as a “dance number”) gets heads a-nodding, while the mosh-worthy C’mon Stimmung sees the first outbreak of sweat-sodden hair flailing among clenched fists and spasming limbs. Recognising that the (cough) ‘artier’ themes of this latest opus are probably better suited to home musing than the live experience, the band just kick up the volume and switch their dials to ‘party’. Eventually, that offending lightbulb gets unscrewed, but the incandescent No Age burn so bright that no one even notices the darkness.