It’s amazing the things that can happen on a Monday night when you’d probably otherwise be in bed. A Ladytron/The Faint double-bill at the Phoenix are one of those things.

The Faint come on in a hail of distortion and, with a cry of “we’re The Faint,” they launch into “Mirror Error.” The Omaha five-piece are demonstrably excited to be here and are in their element. Frontman Todd Fink, dressed in an embroidered tunic, grasps the mic in one hand and the stand in the other, his hair wild — true to the band’s penchant for disturbing imagery. They take the shortest of breaks between songs, with Fink stopping to address the audience only twice: once for a hoarse “Thank you,” and once to say, “We’re having a good time. We hope you are too.”

We are. An energetic crowd has gathered around what someone in the coat check line later calls “drunk old guys moshing.” Everything becomes wildly unstable for a few minutes as the requisite arsehole on coke decides to flop into people for fun, until his girlfriend heaves a long-suffering sigh, claims responsibility for his flailing limbs and escorts him out. Most of the crowd, fortunately, are having too much fun themselves to notice.

The Faint build momentum until everything feels slightly unreal in the onslaught of strobe lighting that comes with “The Conductor.” Once the lighting settles, something else mesmerizing is happening on stage: Jacob Thiele dancing at the synthesizers. It’s hard to imagine a position less suited to dancing than a keyboardist, but Thiele gives it his all anyway. By the end of the set, everyone is jumping and screaming for an encore that never comes.

Ladytron start off slower, with a deeply atmospheric take of “Runaway.” The microphone levels could do with being a little higher at first; most of the lyrics are lost in the bass that is rumbling through my chest and making my internal organs vibrate. But the sound levels pick up after 20 minutes or so, and by “Seventeen” people are starting to move their feet again.

It’s a shame really that Ladytron didn’t take the stage first. Their room-filling, slow-burning sound would have been the perfect build up to the all-out dance party of The Faint. As it is, Ladytron can’t help feeling slightly anti-climactic, a contrast that doesn’t really do them justice. We spend the whole set tapping our feet restlessly, trying to get back to the place The Faint left us with the closing strains of “Glass Danse.” Some start to clap along to Ladytron's “Soft Power,” seemingly willing the song to be faster than it is.

It takes some time, but we do get there. “Tomorrow” gets the mosher contingent going in earnest, and by the end hardly anybody opts for a head start on the coat check line, instead choosing to stick around for the encore. And this time, they’re not disappointed.