Unstoppable fun: Dan Deacon live in London

He instructs us to dance as if we lived in a world devoid of the patriarchy, and where all the money grossed on Jurassic World was spent on public health services. Each team has a leader in the central gangway, while their hundreds of teammates match their movements. Then we’re invited to participate in a Wall Of Life – rushing towards each other in a flurry of high fives. Such are typical goings on of a Dan Deacon concert.

He’s well known for these shenanigans, with his early career coloured by his tendency to play shows on the floor, from the centre of the room with the audience in 360 around him. At a glance, it has the whiff of being gimmicky, but it’s integral to what he tries to achieve in concert. His approach to live shows veer into the margins of performance art. Making huge spaces among the audience for us to participate, he turns us into the focal points of the show, rather than the performer. Interesting, but we mustn’t overanalyse these things. It’s not something to stroke your chin about. It’s another reason to move your feet.

Deacon has long balanced his joyful goofiness with artistic seriousness. He’s a gifted composer. But he also uses "Under The Sea" as his entrance music. His instrumental suite USA is expansive and ambitious. But he still performs "Wham City" – a song about ghosts and cats and pigs and bats with brooms and bats and wigs and rats which play big dogs like queens and kings and everyone plays drums and sings.

There are two things which successfully holds these oppositions in balance. The first is the force of Deacon’s personality. He’s an eminently likable performer – hyper articulate between songs and genuinely funny. When he tells you to make a big space in the middle of the room, it happens. The second is the visceral quality of the music itself. On record, the distance between his loftier work and his half sketched silliness isn’t particularly well bridged. Live, Deacon’s music turns into a roaring, pulsating machine; oozing colour across whip-cracking live drums. It’s near impossible not to be swept into its uplifting frenzy, and tonight’s spirited crowd is won over within minutes.

This is why Dan Deacon is primarily a live performer. Last year’s Gliss Riffer felt a bit like Deacon had hit a glass ceiling of what he can deliver or achieve on record. After the heightened conceptual vision of his previous album America, he found himself facing backwards into his discography – back to three minute pop songs full of glitchy voices. But the evolution of his live show is a different story. Tonight he continues on an upward curve in concert, with the patchiness of his studio output reconciled into an unstoppable onslaught of interactive fun.