"Who wants my sweaty towel?" asks singer-guitarist Cole Alexander. "I'd advise you not to touch it." It's an offer few in the front row can resist, and arms shoot upward. From the middle of the scrum, a lucky fan waves it like a war trophy as Black Lips barrel into their penultimate song, Raw Meat. Joe Bradley bounces on his drum stool, Jared Swilley feints his Hofner bass at a goggle-eyed Alexander and the crowd shout the chorus: "Fresh maggots on my teeth, they're cheap, oh baby!"

This show by the long-running Atlanta garage rockers has the ramshackleness of the Beatles in Hamburg, Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers at CBGB and the Libertines anywhere. Although the quartet are now on their seventh album, inspired amateurism is their pole star. (For a recent example of their capacity for royalty-bothering, check out their confrontation with Gene Simmons, whom they accused of misogyny in the middle of a live webchat the Kiss singer was conducting with the Huffington Post.) Though they've polished up their live act to the point where nudity and vomiting no longer figure, there is still the sense that the wheels could come off this gig at any time.

They don't, of course: 14 years together have tightened the nuts and bolts. For all their beer-guzzling and sailors-on-the-lash singing – this renders lines such as "I got a tattoo of a dolphin on my belly button" regrettably unintelligible – they knock out 17 songs more or less perfectly. As long as you don't go looking for subtlety where none exists, it's possible to fall in love with Hippie Hippie Hoorah's viscous stoner rock and the Clash-esque anthem Dirty Hands. Their sole hit, Bad Kids, sees them out in a last-ditch burst of adrenaline, inspiring one fan to drop to the floor in we're-not-worthy reverence.

• At Sound Control, Manchester, 28 August. Box office: 0161-236 0340. Then touring.