Music based around samples and studio trickery is hard to translate into a live show, and the Go! Team should have it harder than most. The brainchild of Brighton producer Ian Parton, their debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, was one of last year's hidden delights. Listening to it is like looking on bemusedly while an enthusiastic, but tipsy, friend plays you snatches of his favourite records: ancient hip-hop, Northern soul, indie guitar bands, the music from Charlie Brown cartoons. Its brilliance lay in its eclecticism, but it's hard to see how it could work live.

That it does is down to the Go! Team's new frontwoman, Ninja. She looks about 14, as if she should be sitting in a shopping precinct with her gobby cronies, throwing crisps at passers-by. "The Go! Team don't like to see no stush crowds," she warns, and the crowd take note: within minutes, she has the 100 Club grazing dutifully from her hand. She tells them to wave their arms in the air and they wave their arms. She gets them to chant the band's name, and they oblige with such enthusiasm that she has difficulty regaining order. She can sing, too, belting out the chorus of recent single Lady Flash.

Around her a compelling pandemonium reigns. Two female drummers thunder away. Parton flails at his guitar and huffs into a harmonica. At one point, a recorder appears, possibly the only time said item has ever been seen outside of a primary school music lesson.

The music crashes triumphantly along: blaring, distorted samples, noisy guitars, Ninja's gleeful rapping. Dancing, yelling, hugging each other, the audience do everything to express their approval short of forming human pyramids. They are right: it's hard to think of anything pop music has to offer in 2005 that's more fun than this.

· At the Barfly, Liverpool on February 4. Box office: 0151-707 6171. Then touring.