The Luminaire in Kilburn offers up a comprehensive list on their website as to why they serve beer in plastic pint glasses at shows. Glass breaks, I understand that, but there is something about drinking out of plastic that makes Carling taste like, well, Carling. Glass makes it tolerable to a certain degree, even during those first few ‘getting over that proverbial hill’ pints. Tonight, however, I understand why The Luminaire takes this route and institute the no glass rule at their shows. It is absolutely heaving in here. Being at the wrong end of the venue, the toilets are ages away, and the stage is virtually invisible to those more than four rows back.

All this fuss for Asobi Seksu, the new kings and queen of My Bloody Valentine-tinged reverberated shoe-gazery. Admittedly, their sophomore album Citrus – it was released last year across the pond but took its time swimming over – is quite the corker; still, in some of these songs, after countless listens, I have no idea what the New York quartet is on about. Regardless of what language lead singer Yuki Chikudate sings in, it is incomprehensible, and moments arise when I drown in their seemingly endless expulsion of reverb, distortion and noise. Yet, this is integral to Asobi Seksu, on album and in the flesh, and the result of 45 minutes of Citrus in the flesh is just that.

One aspect set straight from the onset is this: there is a hell of a lot of noise ebbing and flowing throughout these melodies. I have one central question. Is it the noise that drives this, or the melody? Does it matter? Well, yes, because anyone can make noise but few can craft melody. The right answer is a little bit of both, but at times Asobi Seksu is pitting one against the other, aggressively. Yet, while the band weave through their small but powerful canon on stage, a stage that is barely visible but ridiculously audible – did I mention how loud this band is – these two opposites, through a series of blending exercises, eventually co-habituate.

This is not the work of guitarist James Hanna. Regardless of song, be it the gorgeous ‘Thursday’, a too-short but sensual foray into the land of ‘Strawberries’ or ‘New Years Day’, Hanna is a maniacal wildebeest, beating the holy hell out of his guitar and flailing everything into the air as if hair-metal got the chicks. His game is, was, will always be, distortion, reverb, muzak. Not one note is clean, let alone slightly crisp. Everything is rough around the edges, borderline inaudible and built a bit too much on the shoegaze ethos embedded in these songs. And it is tiresome. A break would be nice; something acoustic, maybe, or at least different, so in our aforementioned noise versus melody dichotomy, Hanna chooses noise, and more often than not, it is detracting from the power of the melodies.

None of this, nothing Hanna does, matters much in the grand scheme of these songs. Here is why. Every time Chikudate opened her mouth, Asobi Seksu shimmers. Half Bjork and half Hello Kitty, Chikudate – a tiny morsel of a girl and barely visible from the back of the venue but sporting a voice that could carry a lorry – is elevating each melody. Her voice is a golden instrument, the best in the band and the reason why Asobi Seksu pull this shoegaze nonsense off. The band, often too busy muddling about in the periphery, constantly relies on Chikudate, and she responds beautifully. I am agape, marvelling at pure talent, something glorious indeed. Melody triumphs noise in the end.

Comparisons aside, nothing at the sweaty, plastic-glassed Luminaire is exceeding expectations or tearing apart a new leaf in indie meets shoegaze with a smidgen of rock world. Still, Asobi Seksu impress here, albeit only under the direct leadership of one quarter of the band. Without Chikudate, Asobi Seksu lack the playfulness that makes them sexy, and without this sexiness nothing much remains.

Come encore, the venue bellows out a bit and Chikudate is finally visible. I see her mouth move. Enchanting, yes, and I have no clue what she is saying when she sings. Still awestruck.