Titus Andronicus, Hoxton Bar and Grill, February 23

Unless you're in a working men's club in Burnley, a band kitted out in Oasis t-shirts and parkas is bound to raise an eyebrow. When that crowd happens to be squeezed into the ultra trendy Hoxton Bar and Grill it threatens to send them fleeing down Brick Lane in a whirl of skinny jeans and sunglasses.

Titus Andronicus's first trip to our shores coincides with the re-release earlier this month of their debut album The Airing of Grievances. A mash-up of Times New Vikings' noisy melodrama and The Replacements' brash but tender rock brawls, it was the first great lo-fi album of '09. Hardly what the Shoreditch crowd  would expect from this gaggle of scrawny, hairy rock kids.

But from the beginning it's clear that the only thing singer Patrick Stickles has in common with the likes of Mr Gallagher is a snarl and an aversion to scissors and razors. That and a love of rock n roll. But Stickles's brand of rock is a whole different beast - he might spend the gig chatting to the crowd and swigging from a bottle of beer, but when it comes to the music, he's deadly serious. Like the little known Shakespeare revenge tragedy that spawned their name, they're not always easy or comfortable. Live they lose their fuzzy lo-fi edge, preferring to indulge in drawn out, heavier guitars. They're raucous and messy - like a young, hormonal Conor Oberst fronting The Pogues - and there's an agenda that's more intense than their garage-punk contemporaries.

The LP's re-release came courtesy of Merok/XL, whose bosses are in the crowd tonight. "If you see them, tell them to write us a cheque," says Stickles, only half joking. "We've got a new album that we want to get out." Which is hardly surprising - the record they're touring was written when the 23-year-old was in his final year of high school. With frustration and anxiety as key themes, and titles like Fear and Loathing in Mahway, NJ and No Future, it's an ambitious, if not cliched teenage attempt at sincerity.

They play one track from their follow-up-in-waiting - a simple, stripped back song about the civil war, that eventually descends into the usual chaotic explosion of sound. A cover of "the ultimate American rock song" - Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers' Roadrunner - picks up the crowd, but it's their last, self titled single that gets the best reaction. Thrashing around, switching between piano and harmonica, Stickles bends over the mic, screams groundwards, and finally taps into his audience. "Your life is over" they chant in a Libertinesesque, boozy finale. They've just warmed up and the crowd has just about given in.