John Carpenter's film The Fog is hard to forget if you're of nervous disposition. In the 1980 horror flick, mysterious invaders come out of a swamping mist, only to wreak untold havoc. It's a bit like that watching the Big Pink. The stage is shrouded in darkness and dry ice.

A flight case-cum-table at the front contains their effects pedals and sonic weaponry. Occasionally, you can make out the figures in the haze as they unleash a wall of racket destined to do unspeakable things to eardrums.

Named after the Band's classic album, Music from Big Pink, London duo Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell's own debut – A Brief History of Love – offers a modern, poppier take on the early 90s "shoegazing" sound pioneered by the likes of Chapterhouse and Slowdive. However, live, with a retro drum machine juddering alongside a real percussionist, they sound closer to a baffling cross between Spacemen 3 and early Sisters of Mercy. The crowd don't know what to make of the psychedelic gothic sludge. "Is everyone still OK?" asks Furze. "You're very quiet."

It takes a lot of skill to get away with a hallucinatory, extra-sensorial experience and the Big Pink don't pull it off. Their music needs space to breathe, and in small venues it's lost and claustrophobic. Eventually, black-clad Furze's vocal melodies peek out of the mist, and the sweetly evocative Velvet hints at how good they could be. However, a deep bass drone throughout means that it's like listening to a pop transistor radio beside huge industrial machinery. Dominos – their best-known and most anthemic song – briefly threatens to soar before the figures disappear back into the fog, just like the movie. At 02 Academy, Liverpool, Tuesday. Box office 0844 477 2000. Then touring.