Amid the chaos of the big-beat boom a few years ago, some of the movement's protagonists were busy taking the message around the world. Moderately successful in this country, Lo Fidelity Allstars quietly became the biggest-selling British band in the US in 1999, the 400,000 sales of their How to Operate With a Blown Mind album trouncing Oasis, Blur, Stereophonics and Manic Street Preachers.

At the time, the British music press was preoccupied with the band's implosion on New Year's Eve 1998, on the eve of a giant UK tour. Perma-sunglassed vocalist Dave Randall, aka Wrekked Train, departed, taking keyboardist Jon Strong with him. The remaining members merely regrouped, made a few changes, and set off to conquer America.

Three years on, the Lo Fis are back, scarcely recognisable from the punk-big-beat mash of the Wrekked Train era, and it's easy to see why America took them to its heart. They are immersed in funk and soul, their grooves peppered with Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield. When the bass hits and the light catches sweat pouring down the walls, it feels like the birth of a 21st-century Funkadelic.

But the band have yet to address the problem of a frontperson. On their superb new album, Don't Be Afraid of Love, vocals are handled by various characters including former Afghan Whig Greg Dulli. Live, various bandmembers front the group. The best is Andy Dickinson, although handling vocals means, sadly, that he is forced to abandon his star-shaped bass, which he hoists aloft vertically like Bootsy Collins. Less successfully, DJ Phil Ward's vocals sound as if he's selling cabbages.

For the first half of the gig, the Lo Fis' intricacies are swamped by bass, the older songs a throwback to early 1990s techno marauders like Renegade Soundwave. But as band and sound system hit their groove, the room almost levitates, with a pulverising brew of house and Hammond organs. Disco Machine Gun, the standout track from their previous incarnation, sounds lost, whereas new cuts like Tied to the Mast raise hands in the air. The Lo Fis have lost less than they have gained.

· Lo Fidelity Allstars play Bugged Out, Liverpool (0161-950 3777), tomorrow, then tour to Manchester and London.