Tuesday 14/11/06 Pop Levi @ The Barfly, Liverpool

Liverpool’s Barfly loft can be a difficult space to spread the vibe with its high stage towering over the meek crowd. Pop Levi, however, is a performer beamed down from a parallel universe – and as he certainly looks like one as he his band start up their hypnotically thrilling intro to ‘Dollar Bill Rock’.

Huge plumes of dry ice fill the room, with the light beaming across the stage framing the hazy outline of the sartorially immaculate Pop Levi, tonight looking like the most elegant paddy-fielder, with skin-tight stockings and sandals sticking out from hast-mast pants (held up by a gold lame belt, naturally). Seconds into the gig and we’ve already been transported from our dank surrounds, the cold, rainy, depressing, mid-week Winter’s night, into Levi’s ‘Mago Moderno’ world. With a sense of occasion and happening, this is what all great pop should do, and Levi does it better than most.

Most importantly though, the music lives up to the expectations raised. You can call it classical yes, and the R&B blues tinged numbers which open up the set, ‘Dollar Bill Rock’ (which, I’m reliably informed, is not, as one hapless hack suggested, a Prince cover), the swampy ‘(A Style Called) Crying Chic' and ‘Bloodlust’ have their obvious reference points.

However, these reference points aren’t merely trotted out; they’re skewered together, bouncing off each other in the midst of the band’s innate groovyness into an entirely original proposition. ‘Pick Me Up Uppercut’, with it’s repeated jabs and pop hooks, is perfect evidence of this, and propels the performance on to space-rock single ‘Blue Honey’.

Then we have a double treat, one of the first outings of ‘From The Day You Were Born’, a beautiful ballad - reminscent of The Beatles' 'Don't Let Me Down' - which closes forthcoming debut album ‘Return To Form Black Majick Party’. Having giving a glimpse of his tender side, Pop goes straight into upcoming single ‘Sugar Assault Me Now’, perhaps the best example of Levi’s unique hybrid. The song is immense, so much so it has the confidence to keep a killer chorus up its sleeve for an exhilarating conclusion to the night. Then, spell-bounding spell-broken, its back out into the rain and grime…