Tag: Brixton Academy

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Live Reviews Music

Placebo never let you go at Brixton Academy

Placebo really don’t want you on your phone — filming or taking photos — during their show. A polite, heartfelt note on their social media platforms explains how a sea of mobiles makes it difficult for them to connect with the audience and disrespects other fans. Plus watching a gig through a screen takes you out of the moment.

“Our purpose is to create communion & transcendence. Please help us on our mission,” urge Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal in the message, which is also projected onto the backdrop while the roadies set up. Eventually, Molko’s disembodied voice even reads it out.

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Live Reviews Music

The Black Crowes shake their money maker

A group of people, including assorted members of The Black Crowes, amble onto the Brixton Academy stage and assemble at a bar set up at the back. They mill about while a bartender in black bowtie and pink dinner jacket mixes drinks. One man walks over to a jukebox and presses play. Elmore James’ Shake Your Moneymaker blasts out of the speakers.

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Live Reviews Music

The Prodigy light up Brixton Academy

Keith Flint’s silhouette appears above the Brixton Academy stage. That distinct looped guitar opening of The Prodigy’s Firestarter wails out. The screams of recognition are euphoric. And, as the big beats kick in, 5,000 very sweaty bodies move even more enthusiastically than they have all night. Some mimic the music video’s genre-defining posturing, rendered in lasers, with absolute joy. Others bounce or spin or jump or wave their arms in a state of wild abandon.

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Live Reviews

Sharon Van Etten uplifts at Brixton Academy

For Sharon Van Etten, live shows are all about “feeling connection and sharing energy“. You’d think that would be a priority for all performers. But, by the time they can headline venues as big as Brixton Academy, many prefer efficiency. At the level where the lighting cues are seemingly as important as the music, passion is replaced by precision, off the cuff chat by carefully rehearsed dialogue.

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Live Reviews Music

Foals rock Brixton Academy with a smile

“Might start writing a record & making soap,” Yannis Philippakis tweeted in March 2020, just a few days before England went into lockdown. While there’s no news on the Foals singer-guitarist’s range of bath bombs, that record is now imminent. Called Life Is Yours, it’s due next month with early reports throwing around descriptions like “euphoric”, “sunny”, and even “best of their career”.

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Live Reviews Music

IDLES punch and embrace Brixton

Gigs, they say, should start with a bang. Literal pyrotechnics, epic walk-on music, a high-speed hit song, even a straightforward city-based greeting are all designed to grab an audience’s attention right away.

Someone forgot to tell IDLES. Or the band just didn’t listen. Either way, they’ve come up with something even more effective.

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Live Reviews Music

Kasabian re-emerge stronger than ever

Serge Pizzorno was never “just” the guitarist in Kasabian. He wrote most of the songs. He single-handedly produced their last two albums. He increasingly provided lead or co-lead vocals. And, on stage, he was always as dazzling a hype man as a musician. So, when frontman Tom Meighan was convicted of domestic abuse and abruptly left in July 2020, Pizzorno stepped up.

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Live Reviews Music

Sea Girls show what it’s like to be young

Sea Girls’ social feeds are awash with groups of young people either beaming with their homemade banners, dancing energetically without a care in the world, or raising their hands in unison as they cheer.

They’re all clearly having such a good time that their photos could be used as marketing materials for a youth culture brand promising to make dreams come true. And yet, 30 seconds into Sea Girls’ sold-out Brixton Academy gig, it’s clear that the pictures completely undersell the experience.

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Live Reviews Music

White Lies celebrate To Lose My Life

Album anniversary tours are now as common as Liam Gallagher’s name at the top of festival bills. In just the past few weeks, everyone from Alanis Morrisette and Goldfrapp to David Gray and Jill Scott have announced treks honouring their landmark albums.

Even a band as obsessed with staying relevant as U2 are in Japan right now playing The Joshua Tree from start to finish, a full two years after first taking the LP around the rest of the world.

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Live Reviews Music

Midnight Oil won’t be silenced

Peter Garrett has a lot to say. When RockShot spoke to him earlier this year, the Midnight Oil frontman shared carefully considered opinions on everything from climate crisis and the politics of greed to mobile phones at gigs and legacy acts who play the same songs, in the same order, in city after city.

In London tonight, he’s on even better form. Unfortunately that’s partly thanks to Boris Johnson. The singer, a former government minister himself, is clearly riled by the bumbling buffoon (or, to use Garrett’s parlance, “dickhead”), comparing the PM-in-waiting to King Canute, King Lear, Basil Fawlty and the comedy of Ricky Gervais. And that’s even before he gets to branding him a consistent liar with no regard for minorities.

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