On more than one occasion watching Karen O front her band last night I found myself thinking “if you sat beside me on the bus I’d move to another seat”. Her choice of costumes seemed to have been designed by children from a local primary school who been taken to see the Moctzeuma exhibition at the British Museum and then given free rein in a haberdasher’s. She declared her shamanic intent right from the start when the band played for a couple of minutes behind a black curtain which was removed to reveal Karen attired either as Mrs Moctezuma, a large butterfly or some mythic combination of the two. From where I was sitting it was not obvious.

It was the first of several creative costume choices of the evening. This is something of a novelty for me as I tend to judge how much work a band puts into its performance by how sweaty their shirts are at the end. Nonetheless it added to the visual impact of the show. The stage was adorned with several of those large inflatable eyeballs that everyone has at home. One was used for a bit of audience participation and was pushed round by the groundlings. Christmas came early with a blizzard of tens of thousands of bits of cigarette paper, the effect of which was slightly blunted by a sympathy for the poor sod who has to clean it up.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs live are pretty much a one woman show. The three men were dressed in black and the only piece of interaction they allowed themselves with the enthusiastic  capacity audience was to take a couple of photographs. Karen dominated the auditorium from start to finish with a stomping, dancing celebratory performance which could leave you exhausted just watching it. If I have one paradoxical quibble it’s that the set didn’t showcase her voice enough. It was heavy on what we’ll call dance electro rock which was very good but a stripped down version of Y control was ruined by a sound system that made it resemble a £10 radio playing at maximum volume. The current album features acoustic versions of some of the tracks which give evidence of a beautiful voice. Only at the encore did she dispense with the show-womanship and give a lovely performance of Maps accompanied by one guitar, creating more canoodling in sections of the audience than was decent.

You might not want her beside you on the bus but you should try and see her live. Superb!